The beginning of the Road Adventure
We arrived into Auckland at around midnight, after a long delay at Sydney airport. We were absolutely shattered and a bit delirious (we had asked customs if our sweeties counted as animal products because of the gelatine and had been laughed at) and had to navigate our way to our hotel on foot. The hotel was supposedly a 20 minute walk from the terminal but, the signs just seemed to stop half way so we ended up taking closer to 30 and pegging it across a 6 lane highway in the process. It was also pretty chilly.
Once we finally found ourselves inside the nice, warm reception of the Ibis budget, we felt we could relax. We were practically falling asleep as we checked in and, after making our way upstairs we pretty much collapsed on the bed and fell asleep straight away. Travelling on a hangover is so far from ideal.
We woke up the next day feeling rested and refreshed and excited to get going on our next adventure: one month living in a campervan, exploring as much of the country of New Zealand as was physically possible. First though, we had to pick up our van. We jumped in a taxi from our hotel (we had actually gone 5 minutes down the road for breakfast but, upon ordering an Uber, found a that this technically put us in the zone of the airport and added $25 to our bill), and we were on our way into the city of Auckland.
Pulling in to our campervan rental wharehouse, Martin made a bit of a strangled noise beside me. He had spotted our van (it’s pretty hard to miss) and he was not best pleased with what he saw).
We were ushered into the office and made to read and sign lots and lots of scary paperwork. One of the conditions of rental was that we were not to enter the van into and street race or speed time trial of any kind (if you’ve ever driven a 1996 Toyota 1L engine, you’ll appreciate just how hilarious this statement is), another was that, if by some terrible stroke of misfortune, we managed to total our little rust wagon, it would set us back something to the tune of $22,000NZ (more than our entire budget for 3 months in South America) and would effectively spell the end of our trip.
Suitability freaked out by the nasty numbers that we would have to reimburse the rental angecy if we so much a dented the already very beaten up van (we did, but more on this later) we decided to plump for the full insurance, and mere $800NZ (£400). It was a lot, and we hadn’t budgeted for it, but it was a risk we just weren’t willing to take.
During the time we were trying to decide what to do, we were thoroughly entertained by the staff working at the agency. We even got our first lesson in New Zealand slang:
Jandals = Flipflops
Chilly Bin = Cool Box
The whomps = The middle of nowhere
Togs = Swimming costume
This lesson, interspersed with the fact that it was the 23rd December and spirits were clearly high (and maybe still tipsy from the night before) made the whole slightly scary experience much more relaxed and fun. We chuckled as it took one member of staff 3 attempts to get the contents of our van right (3 plates became 2, pots without matching lids and forgetting to bring 1 of the chairs down).
With the pleasantries all dealt with, we were finally able to meet our home for the next four weeks. Our Bright Green Mean Machine that was Hugo! Man, was he beaten up. We started to do a damage check of the exterior but honestly, as we had bought the full insurance, we just kinda shrugged and wrote ‘everything’ on the damage record sheet.
After a final few words to the staff, and reassurances that we would not enter any drag races throughout the course of our rental, we jumped in a revved up the engine. We were on our way. Our destination? North. As far as we could reasonably go to ensure that we had time to do all the Christmas food shopping and get to the house for the big arrival of THE FAMILY.
We drove for a few hours, had a quick sushi break and were busy looking for a campsite when Campermate (our trusty can’t-live-without New Zealand camping survival app) flashed us a deal for a night on a powered site in a beautiful campsite. We set of straight there. Once we were all parked up, we decided to go for a walk. We ended up taking a 3 hour circuit of the nearby headland which, whilst taking far longer than originally intended, yielded some stunning views and glimpses of rare birds.
Once we had got back to our van we settled in and made a stir-fry dinner (we practically lived on instant noodles throughout our camping escapades), and a chocolate mousse each. It started to get pretty chilly so we decided to end the evening cuddled up in the camper with a film and some more chocolate.
The next morning the reason for the cold became apparent. We had planned to get up early and rent some kayaks to explore the area by sea. However, during the night the cloud had come down and was making for a miserable day and some very choppy water. Slightly dejected we had breakfast at our camp and tried to come up with a plan.
Now, we didn’t know this at the time but ducks are actually menaces throughout New Zealand and one of their favourite hangout spots is campsites, presumably due to the amount of food that gets dropped and the tourists who think it’s cute to feed them. We are no exception. As soon as we had started eating we were surrounded by 4 ducks. Very cute ducks. As soon as we started feeding them, the number jumped to 10. Even after we ran out of food and started packing up our camp, they sat on our lot happy to just chill in the hopes of another feed or, presumably until one of their mates signalled that another group of tourists was doling out freebies.
As we were about to leave, still unsure of what to do with our day, I got another notification from my BAE CM (CamperMate). This time for a magical sounding place called Sheep World. We looked at each other with excitement and booked the tickets there on the spot.
Our day at Sheep World was pretty magical. We bought some bags of feed and headed into the park. We got to feed a cow (very sloppy), some pigs (very ugly), some sheep, obv (very enthusiastic), some chickens (very frantic), some emu (very scary), some eels (very creepy), some goats (very crafty), and some horses (very exciting for me). I appreciate that this paragraph reads as if a 5 year old wrote it but that’s honestly how I felt running round this farm. They also had rabbits and of course, lots of ducks.
We found a short walking trail that lead round the extent of the property and followed it. At this point we came across some grown sheep that very nearly broke the fence down trying to get to the food that we had to offer. By far the biggest sheep that I have ever seen was called Rosie. Rosie would stop at nothing to get a handful of grass pellets, including stepping on some of her pen-mates heads.
Our time at Sheep World had come to an end, we had to get back into town to pick up the keys for our Christmas house and also do all of the Christmas shopping for 8 people in about 1 hour. We bundled into the nearest Pac’N’Save and speed shopped for our lives. And we almost got everything on the list too!! (Sadly the one thing we forgot to pick up was the veggie option).
Upon arriving at the house, we knew we had made a choice of venue to spend Christmas day. It had a pool, hot tub, balcony with view of the Auckland skyline and the instruction manual that came with the place was clearly written by the kind of engineer that I would kill to have on my team back home.
We sat down on the sofa with a beer and waited for the rabble to arrive. After about 20 minutes we heard noises out front and knew our time of peacefulness had come to an end. In order to commemorate the occasion, I decided to film myself opening the door to greet them all. Unfortunately this was kind of ruined by my mother misconstruing the delay with something else and shouting through the door “Are you romping?!!”.
We spent the evening catching up on each others’ adventures and drinking wine, beer and of course, tea on the balcony. After a few hours the, understandably tired and jetlagged newly arrived headed off to bed and left us and Michael and Jayne play cards.
Christmas day started much like any other, a cup of tea, a big glass of bucks fizz and some smoked salmon on eggy bread. Maybe we should have done something different to commemorate the tremendous difference of how and, more importantly, where we were spending the day this year, but to us it felt right to stick with tradition.
Throughout the day we drank more beer, played lots of card games, cooked the dinner all together, splashed around in the pool and jacuzzi (predominantly playing Deathball, a version of catch in which the only object is for your team to have the ball and keep the ball. No. Matter. What.).
Shortly after lunch we decided to something novel, just because we could. With it being summer, we packed up our towels and togs and headed on down to the beach. Sadly it wasn’t a very nice beach, what with there being broken shells all over the place and a pair of lads having a mud fight in the sea when we arrived, but it was still a pretty cool experience to head down to the sand and spend some time sunbathing on a day that is usually cold and miserable and best spent indoors.
When it came to eating, we decided to sit out in the garden, something which, again, we have never, ever been able to do for Christmas dinner.
Something else we have never done on Christmas day is to actually venture out of the house and go do some touristy things. We decided that, as we really didn’t have much time in Auckland, we would utilise Christmas day as one of our site seeing days. We all got a bit dolled up and went out for the 20 minute stroll through the city to the Sky Tower. The prices on the website were a bit OTT but we had rang them earlier and gotten ourselves a sweet discount (seriously, this is huge in NZ, just ring places up and ask for a discount and there will almost always be one available).
When we arrived we were pretty disappointed as we realised that, specially for Christmas day, they had shut down the bar. As I’ve said a few times before, Christmas in the summer is weird. Apparently in New Zealand those without too much family or something to do used to just head to the casino and get absolutely tolleyed. Even the casino in the tower had closed the bar, and the restaurant was only serving one drink per meal. We had already eaten way too much so resigned ourselves to a cocktail free tower experience.
The views from the top were pretty cool, we had timed our visit to coincide with sunset which, sadly, didn’t really happen to some selfishly placed cloud. But we did manage to get a view of the city in the day and all lit up for the night. And we got some pretty nice good pictures.
After we had finished at the tower we wandered around for a little while, desperately trying to rectify our ‘lack-of-cocktail’ situation, we wandered around for a little while trying to find anywhere open. We eventually settled on an Italian restaurant that had a distinct lack of cocktails but did have some interesting looking beers and ciders. We stayed for one drink and it was clear that some of the members of our party were dead on their feet so we forewent the second round and got heading back to the house via Franklin Street.
Franklin Street is apparently a famous street in Auckland which, every year, the residents and businesses turn into a Christmas wonderland. Every house is lit up, often with different themes. There were hundreds of people wandering up and down the street with some running up onto people’s porches to grab photos. There was even a band playing at one end of the street.
Unfortunately none of us got any photos so you’ll have to use your imagination on this one.
Once back at the house, had a few more drinks and played some games and then everyone went off to bed. The cleaning up was a problem for tomorrow Us. Given everyone’s jetlag, this pretty much garunteed that everyone would be up and working on getting the house ready before Martin and I emerged for the day. Unfortunately our calculations were a bit off and we ended up being the first up.
The morning was spent eating leftovers (bubble and squeak of course) drinking tea, coffee and a few beers and frantically packing up all our stuff whilst also trying to remember where to put everything back in this guys kitchen. It was only half way through out 3rd dishwasher cycle that I realised that we could actually have gone out for Christmas dinner and saved us all a lot of hassle. Rather selfishly, though, I had wanted to have a nice home cooked meal and a bit of normalcy for the day so I was happy with our choice.