North Island - Lake Taupo to Auckland

After leaving River Valley we headed north to Lake Taupo via New Zealand's only desert and the mountain which features as the Mountain of Doom in the Lord of the Rings trilogy... as you can see it was a pretty spooky looking place.

And then we arrived at Lake Taupo on a very windy afternoon - a vast expanse of water which was turning into a veritable sea with waves courtesy of the wind.

An interesting location for the local McDonalds... entrance via a DC-3. We found a bar to sit in and watch the round of the A1 GP which was taking place in Taupo whilst we were there... we didn't fancy taking the campervan to the motor racing circuit... and we felt we should be supporting the host country, NZ, which actually came in third. Needless to say there were plenty of cheers in the bar!

A beautiful sunset shot from the campsite....

On leaving Lake Taupo we took a quick look at Huka Falls... which are close by... the force of the water being controlled through gates and used to generate the local electricity supply.

Next stop Rotorua

First of all a look around another typical Mauri village.. no dancing for the Howes this time! But we quite liked the look of the smoked fish.

Then it was on to the geysers and the boiling mud pools... boy was it smelly there! It was interesting to see, but to be honest once you have seen one geyser and a couple of mud pools that's about it!

Along the roads in this part of the country we discovered that montbretia grows wild adding a fantastic orange glow to the roadsides. Our route was now taking us to Papamoa, where we could spend a couple of days on the beach relaxing and were pleased to be able to overlap with Diane and Geoff as they were heading south past our stopover. They were funny having just spent their first night in their campervan... we felt like old hands and were full of (probably unwanted) advice!

The Coromandel was somewhere lots of people had said we must call into, but we could only spare one over-night stop and it was a long and hard drive for Doug so we took a lunchbreak at this pretty spot, but even so arrived pretty shattered, but just look at the reward. The most magnificent sunset.




It's a long drive from the Coromandel to Auckland and we needed to take a break.... we came across a rare Anglophile and monarchist... all the cafe was adorned with GB & regal memorabilia.... right down to the loo!

And so finally, we arrived at Auckland, City of the Sails. Forty years ago we had seriously considered emigrating here... and now we were here. We didn't climb up the Sky Tower, didn't even take the glass lift to the viewing platforms, nor did we do the bridge walk, preferring to take a leisurely look at the Maritime Museum, shop and frequent several lovely restaurants in and around the harbour area.












Now it was time to take ourselves over that bridge and head up to Northland.