On The Road

This is where we stopped for lunch, not to shabby.

We put plenty of km's in on Saturday, we drove up through Russel and took the ferry across to Paihia were we stopped briefly to send mail and buy diesel tax cred's. Then it was to the west coast through Kaikohe and the Waipoua Forest were we stopped to have a look at the Tane Mahuta, a massive 14m girth, 244.5 m3 tall Kauri Tree. Pretty massive and impressive to say the least. We ended up at Bayly's Beach where we were able to drive onto the beach, but as soon as we did, we got stuck with the ol' van'er-oonie. Luckly some other camper-vaner's were watching the embarrassing moment and helped push us out. Then while we were doing that 2 police cars blew by on the beach chasing down a motorbiker in a high speed pursuit; a pretty interesting start at Bayly's Beach.

We ate down a fine cuisine meal of noodles and potatoes, and then as we were just thinking we could camp there a local told us that the tide would come up and wash us out if we stayed there for a few more hours. So everything got packed up and we headed out. We managed to find a cool little dirt road that was the entrance for a short hike up a rock where we crashed, as unimpressive or boring as it sounds; it was a really awesome day.

Next morning was on the road again, after doing the short hike, we spent the day heading down the west coast towards Auckland again.

We made it just outside of Auckland on our way to Hamilton when we heard some noise from the engine and a few lights came on, my first thought was a belt. Sure enough, after we pulled over, the alternator belt blew, which makes sense cause our van was sitting for a while before we bought it. So we basically pulled just off the motor way and set up camp, while figuring out what the game plan was. So far our van has been fairly solid with just a few minor issues.

Our plan is to hopefully meet up with our friend Jess and another buddy Jason in the next week.