into da van

Moving into the van


Heading out of Auckland for the first time was a bit of an adventure in its own, thrown into a van where we I am siting on the wrong side and everyone drives on teh wrong side of teh road here. I have to take my shoes off to drive as the drivers seat is even to small for "A" and I can use all the room I can get, there were some cargo shifting bars behind the seat which I quickly removed as to be able to recline the seat farthur back. We made it to our first stop not to bad but there has been crazy weather here, rain hail and 100+ MPH winds. The van feels like it is going to blow off the raod sometimes while driving.
First night in the van was not to bad, the wind shook us up a bit and woke us a few times but we made it through the night, 2Km after leaving our first camp driving up a big hill... 2nd gear, 3rd, downshift to up the rpms, go to shift into 3rd... blew the shift.. no wait shifting linkage jamed.. WTF... unable to shift to any gear I was forced to fire up the hazard lights I backed down the hill riding the brakes the whole way down, flaged a car past and settled into the shoulder at the bottom of the hill.. on the wrong side but hey It was a wide shoulder.
We walked on down to a cafe/diveshop "Seafriends" where a really nice lady made the phonecall for us to our campervan company and explained where we were and how to get here. We sat around for 30-40 minutes waiting for teh return phonecall to tell us what the scoop was. Since it was a Sunday they said they will tow out a new van and we would halve to wait around till they could get out to us.
The nice couple at Seafriends offered up there car for us so we coulk Tiki Tour around the area.  We were quite taken aback by this hospitality and took them up on the offer.  To our surprise we found some amazing sites which we would have blewn by if the van had not gone kaput.  Things always happen for a reason we said and just enjoyed the day.  We went down to a marine reserve just down the road where they snorkel and  scuba dive out, which seemed a little cold for our liking.  What a view though!!!
After that we drove to Pakiri Beach which was a big open ocean view with white sand dunes.  Gorgeous again but very windy so made quick work of stop there.  We returned to Seafriends, waited a bit and the van replacement arrived.  We switched our gear and supplies to the new van and headed onward.
We headed on to Waipu cove where we got a campsite after driving around aimlessly with no plan that day.  We were tired and worn out from the day and ready to get going fresh the next mornning up north further.  We had plans to see the Bay of Islands but somehow missed the turnoff and hit Kerikeri isnstead and saw the oldest rock house, a park, waterfall area and walk.  Some of these small town are so quaint and adorable.  Kerikeri seemed like a surf town sort of by some of the shops and some guy I overheard had been out earlier that day, I cannot imagine the wind and trying to surf in that.
After Kerikeri we headed off and before we knew it we were at teh deciding point to drive to the very northern tip of NZ or head back on down the East coast of the Nothern reagion. We drove on down andopted to save the gas and driving for making our way back south. We were getting cloase to where we had to take a ferry across a straight and it would have been closed down for the night we found a farm where they had a cute area setup for campervans, basic and just a place to park off the road for $10.