Bay of Islands

After picking up our camper, we hit the road leaving Auckland for the north, and more specifically, the Bay of Islands. On the way out of the city we noticed a Pak n Save, a New Zealand supermarket. We duly stopped for our first food shop of the trip. Pak n Save was ace, not too expensive and plenty of bargains, although it became clear that fruit and veg is expensive in New Zealand. After stocking up on pasta, sauce, rice, bread, biscuits (even some vegan cookies) and other bits and pieces, we were back on the road, however not for long as we had to stop at a service station to pay for the only toll road in the country. It did also give us an opportunity to have lunch. So after lunch, we hit the road once again to head up north. During the day the weather wasn't particularly great and it didn't get any better the further north we went, but that didn't put us off and we carried on anyway. The roads weren't too busy once we had got away from Auckland and there was some pretty cool scenery despite the weather. The roads were however quite different to England as they were a lot more bendy, having to wind around mountains and scale fairly steep hills, which I found weren't much fun in an automatic van. Around four hours after picking the van up, we were well into the northern region with still no improvements in the weather. If anything it was worse, with very heavy downpours and lots of flooding in the fields alongside the road, and in some areas, where the fields were obviously quite saturated, water was getting worryingly close to the road itself. However we carried on and stopped at a petrol station to refill. I was surprised to find someone already waiting for me before I had even reached the pump, ready to refuel for me. It seemed a bit old school but I didn't complain, plus they were able to warn us about the flooding further north and to expect possible road closures. Still we carried on, not getting the hint. It wasn't until we got to around 25km from Paihia, one of the towns in the Bay of Islands, that we came across a 4x4 parked over both sides of the road. The driver got out and informed us that the road north was closed due to flooding, and the only other possible route left to take wasn't far off being closed either. This news wasn't what we wanted after a good three and a half hour drive. However we didn't think waiting around for the weather to improve was the best thing to do, so decided to head back down south so not to waste too much time. It was about 5pm by this point, so after around an hours drive back in the direction we had just come from, we stopped in a town called Whagarei, where we found a nice little holiday park to spend the night. 

After arriving, parking up and plugging in, we cooked our first meal in Carlos, pasta obviously, despite there being an on sight kitchen and the fact it was still raining. 

The next morning we had breakfast in the van, and made use of the shower facilities before making our way back down south. A few hours went by before we reached Auckland, however this time passing through it. The weather at this point was quite nice and the city skyline with the sky tower looked quite pleasant, which was typical as the four days we had spent there before were all either, wet, windy, stormy or a combination of all three. Anyway, we carried on, hopeful the clear skies would continue. Our destination at this point was a town called Thames, with our plan to stay there before driving around the Coromandel Peninsula, weather dependant obviously....