We've had a day of nice weather. This morning we continued heading up and over to the west coast. We stopped off at the Haruru waterfall, which was pretty cool. You could walk around on some rocks on the top of it. It wasn't very tall, but was pretty wide. Afterward we stopped off in Kaitaia and asked about blokarting in Ahipara, and they told us to go visit the place at 4pm to see if the wind and tides were right. We drove up the Karikari peninsula and stopped off at a nice beach for lunch...and a quick nap! It was very nice and a definite plus to having your bed with you. We then headed to Ahipara and went to the beach there. It was huge, but really beautiful. We walked around for a ... read more

Today felt really long. We drove up to Auckland, and figured out how to get around...kind of. We had two potential buyers look at the van today. One was a French couple who seem interested, but want to get it checked out by a mechanic, which they said takes a few hours. The other was a German girl who also seemed sort of interested, but I don't think really knew what to ask. Her boyfriend is meeting her in New Zealand later, so we think he may have more of a say in whether or not they get it. We'll see how it goes. We went to the Auckland Domain Park today, which was really big and nice, but that was about all besides showing the van. We left this evening and started driving north. Tonight ... read more

This morning as we were leaving our site, we talked to a guy who had camped there. He was hiking the Highway, which was super impressive. We continued on the Forgotten World Highway and went through the Moki Tunnel, which was built in 1936 This one-way 180m tunnel is also known as ‘Hobbits Hole’, and the site where unique giant crab fossils were found during construction. It was really cool. We then went on a bunch of unsealed road to get to Mt. Damper falls, which is the North Island's highest waterfall. It was pretty cool...even if we couldn't see the whole thing (just the top part). The walk to and from the waterfall was a little tough because it had rained a lot, so there was a lot of squishy ground, mud puddles and sheep ... read more

This morning we went to Wanganui, but since it was Sunday a lot of the stores and shops were closed. But the weather was nice, so we walked around the downtown area for awhile. The main street has gas lamps, which is pretty cool. I could see how charming it would be to visit at night or during a holiday (when everything would be decorated). We lucked out that the glass blowing studio, Chronicle Glass Studio and Gallery, that we wanted to visit was open (usually they are closed on Sundays). Some artists had rented the place out to make glass trophies. It was a lot of fun to watch the artists work. They studio was down below, so you could watch from the upper level. There were people there who knew the artists and could ... read more

Today we got up and drove to Wine Tours by Bike and got our bikes, some water, helmets (they are required by law here), and a map of where to go. Also were some wine holders if you bought any bottles, and the service of them coming to pick up wine (if you bought more than your bike could hold!) Nigel was incredibly nice and helpful in helping us plan what route to take and which wineries to visit. He gave us the specialties of each winery and told us which wines were worth trying. It was really windy, so the biking wasn't very easy. We visited about 7 wineries (there were way more, but we ran out of time). They ranged from very small, family run places, to bigger, more commercial places. There were three ... read more