Lord Of The Dings

New Zealand... Sorry about the late blog post, but we have found it somewhat difficult to find quality wifi here.
Upon arriving in New Zealand one week earlier than expected, we were unable to pick up our campervan so we toured around the beautiful city of Auckland for a few days. We then rented a little car and headed up to the northern tip, Cape Reinga via the Bay of Islands where we saw killer whales, did some sand tobogganing on the Te Paki sand dunes and took in some spectacular scenery. We thought the rental of the little vehicle would ease our way into driving on the other side of the road for when we picked up our campervan. ( read on ...)
Once we picked up our campervan, we continued touring the north island along the Coromandel Peninsula. We spent some time at Hot Water Beach where we dug shallow pools during low tide which were heated by thermal activity.
We were fortunate enough to also see New Zealand play Zimbabwe in a cricket match. We thought we could get some cheap tickets by arriving at the match 4 hours after the game had begun ( so we could catch the last half hour or so). Little did we know... We stayed at the game for 3 hours and when we left it was still going on. This game goes on forever. The boys enjoyed it... The girls, not so much.
We are finding New Zealand to be quite pricey. For example, campgrounds charge per person and not per site, fuel is over $2.00 a litre and a dozen eggs is $8.00(especially coming from Peru where everything was quite reasonably priced).
Back to the topic of driving on the other side of the road... This actually hasn't been too much of an issue, however leaving campground sites seems to be a bit of a challenge as Jeff took out a guard rail and dinged up the RV quite bad. Thank goodness we opted for the last minute insurance coverage which covers any damage over $5000.00 (which we are certainly over).
If you ask the kids what New Zealand is all about so far, they probably wouldn't mention the amazing scenery and fantastic weather. They would say that it's all about beaches, campground playgrounds (trampolines, jumping pillows) and rolling down hills in zorbs (large inflatable balls filled with water) (www.zorb.com)
We are catching the ferry from Wellington in 2 days and plan on touring the south island of New Zealand over the next 2 weeks. We will try and post another couple of blogs prior to us leaving New Zealand.
On a side note, our thoughts go out to Jeff's Uncle Al and family during this difficult time.
Bye For Now