Chapter 2 - On the road in New Zealand!

Hello guys,

We're in New Zealand and beginning a new adventure after an expensive and stressful first week.

Our route to the other side of the world!

This will be a super quick post becuase we're on the road and have 15 minutes until the internet cafe closes. Until yesterday we were cooped up in the hostel in Auckland spending all of every day looking at vans. Long story short, we found one that looked perfect and well within our price range but when we took it for the mechanical check before handing over the money it went all wrong, which at the time was a real pain as looking for a campervan to buy is a stressful business and we wanted to start the holiday again. Anyway, it was a pretty conclusive mechanical check even if it was the wrong result - within 3 minutes the mechanic turned around to us pointing out oil pouring from every crevace under the van and said he would't even continue the check, then he jumped in the van and parked it outside before we could even think about it. Better to walk away from it than try and find a solution to the problem!

Luckily we found another one that evening - an Isuzu ELF 150 with up to date WOF (the Kiwi version of the MOT), nice inside, all the camping gear we needed, AND.... dah dah daaaaaaaaaaaah... a flip down screen and DVD player! Sweeeeeeet.

Chilling in the van, our house on wheels for the next couple of months. Check out those speakers!

Fia and the van getting ready for breakfast :o)

So we're driving around the northern tip of the North Island and then back to Auckland to pick up our mate Charlie and head a bit further south. Yesterday it was raining hard so we drank a bottle of wine that the previous owner of the van gave us to christen him, and watched Zoolander on DVD! Ha ha, amazing. Today we woke up to a really sunny day, I went for a swim in the sea (which was actually freezing!) and then did some fishing while Fia read her book in the sun and chilled out. Nice.

We'll update this next time we get chance and have some better photos to share.

Love to everyone xxx