Te Ika-a-Māui 'The North Island' - 18,000km from home

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After 20 amazing days on the South Island, I jumped on a plane and headed to Auckland to meet up with Rich, Ally and their friend Dom to hire a camper van and travel around the North Island for 25 days! But before they arrived, I had 2 days to spare in Auckland, NZ's biggest city. A quarter of the country's population live here in an urban sprawl bigger in size than London! The remoteness of where I'd been so far in this country was quickly replaced with an identikit city that honestly could be anywhere in the world. However Auckland is unique. It is built upon a field of volcanoes, 60 in total, that mean it could go into meltdown at any time. Only a few of them actually look like volcanoes, many of them below groundor have been quarried to build Auckland itself. I ventured out to one of the main ones, Rangitoto Island on an overcast, rain-threatening morning on the ferry, and marched the one hour route up to the crater rim. The reward was a moment of peace and tranquility affording amazing views back across to Auckland and around the rest of the bay's volcanic cones. A good morning's work in my book!

The rest of my stay in Auckland was somewhat less exciting, involving me finding ways to spend the day without spending too much money yet staying amused..

I met the guys back at the airport, from where we picked up our campervan, Britney, on Thursday morning and set off on our merry way, North of the city, to the Northlands Peninsula. We only stopped at one place, Waipu Cove (home of the best sign in the world, Waipu - Keep It Clean) before we reached our home for the night in Whangarai, on a campsite situated right next to a 25m waterfall! We were all still really excited about the whole campervan trip that night so not a lot of sleep was had!

The next morning we went and visited the neighbouring falls which were quite impressive, and checked out some nearby caves, both free which is always a bonus. The caves were ok but the previous days' rain meant that they were a bit treacherous to head down into. From here we headed North again (my turn to drive Britney!), with no real destination set for that night, although we wanted to visit the much-hyped Bay of Islands. These turned out to in fact be much over-hyped and whilst stopped at a decent viewpoint we made a cup of tea and took some time to plan the next legs of the trip. The lengthy work of this planning session meant that it would be best to stay where we were and find a campsite close by. A bit of negotiation and we managed to get $16 off a night's stay right on the river with another waterfall in sight!

Living like this is amazing fun. Living out of an awesome, really well equipped campervan, the ultimate freedom to do what we want to and go where we want to, and just having a laugh! On our 3rd day we drove all the way up to Cape Reinga, New Zealand's most northerly point and also where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet, which creates huge whirlpools just off shore and also has the most incredible wind conditions I've ever experienced! Constant winds of around 80km/h and gusts that must have been up to 150km/h, we were literally struggling to stand up straight and walk in a straight line! Taking any photo was also a challenge! Braving the winds was worth it for the fantastic views out beyond the lighthouse and across the torrential ocean. The Maori's believe that this is the site where your soul journeys to before it leaves the Earth by dropping off the end. Standing on the cliffs you can totally believe that this is the edge of the world

A quick lunch break and we were back on the road, and our next stop was the desert. 30m high sand dunes that the strong winds have created by blowing the sand in from the seabed. A race was on the cards to see who could climb to the top first. Needless to say, after a minor slip and losing my sunnies in the process, I lost. However, the winner was the view from the top. It felt like we had just entered some kind of timewarp and ended up in the Sahara, not 5 minutes from the tip of New Zealand! Going down, I decided that there was only one way to get to the bottom. Roll. I'm sure I looked ridiculous but do you know what, I didn't care!! A quick wash in the stream at the bottom and we piled back into the van. We were aiming to catch a ferry across Hokianga Harbour that cuts right into the peninsula, otherwise it was a 1 hour detour around the outside. I would say 'guess if we made it' but I think you already know that we didn't.. It was getting later in the day and we just wanted to stop somewhere and eat and sleep, so at the next campsite we came across we pulled in and called it a night.

A competition had begun to see who could barter the most off the cost of a night stay on a sight for our van and currently the leaders are Rich and Ally who have both managed to get away with a $5 per person saving. This could prove tough to beat considering the average cost of a night is $15!

Day 4, my turn to take the wheel again, and this time it involved many, many kilometres of winding mountain roads which were great fun to drive. We travelled through Kauri forests, which are huge trees that can reach up to 20m in circumference and are the Maori Kings of the Forest. We stopped at several different sites where trees of particular significance, either through Maori tradition or because they were the biggest/oldest/widest, and were taken aback each time at just how big the trees are! No hugging allowed though.

There are so many places to stop along these roads that offer postcard-perfect views across lakes, forests and mountains over yonder, that our journey times were always 1 or 2 hours adrift of our intentions. From the edge of the forest we drove towards Auckland hoping to get as close as we could as we knew we wouldn't be able to get far enough past the city to find a campsite that night. So we ended up at a campsite on Pakiri Beach owned by a rather obnoxious woman who wasn't open to any kind of bartering and knew that she could charge what she liked due to her park being the only one for miles around. Hmm. The location, however, was absolutely stunning. Right in front of our spot for the night was a sandy riverbed that led down to a huge beach overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Beautiful white sand drizzled with sea shells and the occasional trickle of river water, leading out into the calming turquoise waves. Heavenly! This brought the first section of our road trip around the North Island to an end and we all agreed that it didn't feel like we'd really seen that much for the amount of travelling we'd done so far. We also agreed that this was about to change with our next stop, Waitomo.

We travelled down to Otorohangi, a small town 5 minutes from the famous Waitomo Caves. We booked ourselves onto a full day of fun below ground with our guide Rudy and after a quick demonstration, we began by abseiling 27 metres into a huge cavern with streams of sunshine flooding the darkness of the central chamber. Our action packed day continued with us wading up the subterranean river in our sexy wetsuits and wellys and squeezing through the tiniest holes imaginable, before slowly floating back down the river on inner tubes below an umbrella of illuminated gloworms adorning the rock above our heads. Rudy put us through more tight spaces including one where I very nearly got wedged in, but in a surprising turn of character I didn't panic or get frustrated (it must be said that the photos demonstrate the opposite) and managed to squeeze through in a scene that was very reminiscent of being born. After a big leap into the heart-stoppingly freezing water with the inner tube held firmly to our backsides, we headed back to the chamber that we abseiled down into and proceeded to climb back out, up the seemingly sheer-sided rockface to daylight and the end of a really fantastic adventure! This trip was one thing that I wanted to do before I even left the UK and it didn't let me down! We all massively enjoyed the day!

From Waitomo we drove to Mt Taranaki, a huge isolated volcano bulged out of the West coast of the island. To get here we could have taken the coast road but instead decided on the 'Forgotten World Highway'. A historic trail through gorges and hilly bush country passing by many memories of past industry and settlements. We had a driving guide for the route that pointed out all the points of interest but we soon realised that this was useless and mostly wrong. On one memorable occasion we ended up driving along 17km of gravel path which we thought was only about 3km and ending up in a field with a tractor and no obvious pathway to the waterfall we were looking for! We were making fairly slow progress so ended up staying at a camper site on the top of a hill with commanding views of the whole valley and gave us a fantastic view of the sun setting!

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