Picking up the camper in New Zealand!

Our camper!!! And Auckland in the background!

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14.02.06

Happy Valentines Day! We arrived in Auckland at 6.00am, after our 12 hour flight from LA. We jumped on a bus and headed straight to our hostel. We spent most the day exploring the city before watching the sunset over the harbour.

15.02.06

We headed to the Auckland Domain, a large park area that houses the city museum . The museum has displays on Maori culture and history. We saw a performance of Maori song and dance by "manaya", which included the famous war dance! Very enjoyable.

16.02.06

We picked up the camper van!!! Nice spacious mercedes sprinter, shower, toilet, fridge, cooker etc…fantastic! We headed back into Auckland and drove up Mt. Eden, which is the highest volcano cone in the area. Auckland has 48 volcanoes in all. There were great views across the city. We then headed north to the Bay of Islands. Nice scenic drive, stunning coastal scenery and clear waters! We stopped off on route at the most photographed toilets in NZ, Hundertwassers Loo in KawaKawa. He was an Austrian born artist and eco-architect, who lived in KawaKawa. Brightly coloured with lots of ceramic mosaics and coloured bottles. We found out about this from Billy Connolly NZ tour!

Damian makes a friend!

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17.02.06

We had a jog along the beach in the morning and walked up to Haruru falls, which included a trek through a mangrove forest. We visited our favourite picnic spot for lunch at the Waitangi reserve which had great views back across the bay.

In the afternoon we visited the reserve which is home to the treaty house where the Signing of the "Treaty of Waitangi" took place in 1840. British Sovereignty was claimed over the whole country with guaranteed rights for both Maori & non-maori citizens. We saw a Tehetoho performance. The leader of the group explained to us that Maori still live in tribes & tolerate each other but no more than this. Each tribe has different dances & songs passed on by previous generations.

18.02.06

We visited the small town of KeriKeri. We followed the riverside trail to the 30m high Rainbow Falls. We had planned to go kayaking but ran out of time so we went for a swim instead. Went to mass in the evening before driving further north to 90 mile beach.