Vanna...Vanna White

We picked up our new camper van on Thursday morning. Jan and Iain were kind enough to drive us over to the depot. But first, we had some business to attend to with Iain. Not many people know this, but since Iain retired a few years ago he has gotten more into his water colour painting. He is very talented and we were very lucky to be able to purchase one of his paintings and send it home! We picked one of Mount Ngauruhoe, which is the mountain we climbed on the Tongariro Crossing. It is beautiful and has a bright blue sky in it. So awesome! Jan and Iain were so kind to have us stay with them for a couple of nights. We really appreciated it and had a great time getting to know them better.

We named our new van Vanna White - get it, because it was a white van. hahahaa. Cheesy, I know! We started out driving up the west coast of the northern part of the north island because this is where the two largest Kauri trees are located. These are trees native to NZ and they grow to be massive. Not that tall, but so thick and wide. They were pretty impressive to see.

The largest Kauri tree

 

That night we stayed at a campsite which was connected to a little forest. Apparently, Kiwi live in this forest so they do tours at night so people can see them. Unfortunately, all the tours were booked out, but you can also do the walk yourself as long as you have a red light. Kiwi don't like white light but they can't detect the red light alone so you can see them pretty close up if you're quiet, and very lucky. We didn't have red light, but a lady at the caravan park gave us some red cellophane to put over our headlamps so we could go out that night.

Once it was dark we set out to see if we couldn't find this elusive Kiwi bird. With our cellophane headlamps on and ready we set off on the boardwalk through the forest. At first we didn't hear or see anything except for a few glow worms. Then we started to hear all this rustling just in front of us. We kept walking a little bit and honestly you could hear something pretty big rustling on the ground only a few feet away from us. We turned our headlamps on, but with the cellophane and crappy batteries that we had, we could barely see just in front of us. And I think we scared the animal away. A minute or two later the guided tour showed up with this massive red light. When we told the tour guide we had heard something he got the group to stop and listen. What we think was the kiwi did come back, but never as close as it was when we first heard it, so we didn't get to see it. The tour group moved on and so did we. We hit another area where we could here 2-3 more 'kiwi', but again, with our crappy headlamps we were unable to find them in the forest. So close and yet so far!

The next day we started to drive inland from the west coast to make our way across to the east side of the island. As soon as we started inland we saw a sign for sand tobogganing. Dave has never done it before and the sand hills were huge so we decided to make a pit stop and try it. When the guys dropped us off at the sand hill they told us we may want to wait a little until the tide came in a bit because the water would then stop right where the dune ended so you could slide from the sand right onto the water. We thought that was an awesome idea so we took his advice and went on a little hike up the dunes to see some neat sand sculptures he assured us were at the top. Honestly, that hike didn't seem so little after a while. Hiking up in sand is really hard work, and it was a hot day without a cloud in the sky. We did make it to the top and saw some sand sculptures, but I'm not really sure it was worth it. So, we headed back down and did some tobogganing, which was really fun...except the climbing back up to the start part! After that we kept driving over to a town called Paihia on the east coast, right in the Bay of Islands. We had dinner there and then stayed close to town.

Steph bombing it down the dune into the ocean

 

The next day we took a car ferry over to a town, Russell. Jan and Iain highly recommended it and so had a few other people so we made sure to spend a full day there. And, we were in luck. While we were there it was the Battle of Kororareka Festival, so there was a lot happening in the town. There were bbq's and live bands and a market. We had a great day just walking the town, checking out a few lookouts, hitting the beaches, having a drink and eating some yummy food. Russell definitely lived up to its expectations!

While we were in Russell we had checked out a few brochures to see what we should do with our last day in the Bay of Islands. We signed up for a boat and snorkel trip to a place called the Poor Knights Islands. So, off we went on a huge boat that would have held 50+ people, with only 20 of us onboard (including the crew). We spent the majority of the day on the boat and it was awesome! They drove us out to the islands and did a little history about the place while we were heading there. Then we got about 3 hours to snorkel, paddle board, kayak, eat and relax around the island. We started with a paddle board to a nearby cave, which was awesome. It was so big that later in the day we took the whole boat into it. It is actually the largest sea cave in the southern hemisphere. Then we did some snorkelling - and both Dave and I think this was some of the best snorkelling we have both ever done. There were so many different types of fish. There was also another smaller cave that you could snorkel into and when you got to the back and looked out towards where you had just come from, it was spectacular. It was a sort of blue grotto effect with the lighting and everything just looked so beautiful!

One of the Poor Knight's Islands

After some lunch the boat left the snorkel spot and we went on a tour around the island. They showed us some other cool spots about the island before we stumbled upon a heard of Hector's dolphins. We got to dolphin watch for a little before heading back to the mainland. All in all it was an awesome day!

Then it was back to Auckland for a night before flying back to Australia. We had such an amazing time in NZ, we were both really sad to be leaving. The country is so beautiful and so small that within a few hours you can see and do so much. It is definitely a place neither of us will every forget and hopefully we will have a chance to head back sometime in the future!

Thanks for reading!

xoxo