With our life in our van we set off North of Auckland with sight seeing and shopping on our mind. We had decided Raincoats might be a sensible purchase - after living in flip flops and boardies for a few months the wardrobe lacked some winter wear.
We headed up to the northern peninsula above auckland which includes sights such as the bay of islands, 90 mile beach and absoloutly massive Kauri trees - each about 5m wide. Inbetween driving to these we did some great short walks.
Down at Piha on the west coast we stopped off to see the surf, I say see because I think Charlie is taking a bit of time to get used to colder waters again and so wasnt so keen to get in....! Back to the northern coast to the Cormmandel Peninsula which was beautiful. Here we went to Cathedral cove, the bays next to it and then hot water beach which was more surreal than I thought it would be. A fairly cold beach with water coming out the sand at 64 degrees. All you need is a spade to dig yourself a hot hole and if you can handle the heat you can sit in it until the tide comes back. We had to add some cold sea water to our hole to make it bearable!!
In a random route plan we then drove back to the west coast to Raglan, another world renowned surf spot (again too cold for Charlie!). Then on down to Waitamo Caves to lower ourselves into the underground world filled with glowworms twinkling like stars. Brilliant.
Next stop Taupo and Rotorua - volcanic activity. There is steam coming out of the ground all over the place! We jumped in some dirty stream which were hot, jumped in some nice hot spa pools at our campsites, watched geysers shooting water into the air, marvelled at the variety of colours in the earth and got a little annoyed at all the rain!!!
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