Jali's Journey: Forests & Flats

Heading south, we entered the glorious surroundings of the Waipoua forest, home to the giant and sacred kauri trees. The biggest trees really were impressive. A beautiful region with the road snaking high up into the forest hills and then back down again to where we found our campsite: a lovely site next to the Waipoua river.

Here we had three idyllic days with forest walks, wild river swims and fun with a Scottish family with two young children (Alba and Floyd) similar to our boys' age. They really loved playing together and 'sharing' each others toys - we were to meet up with the family again at other sites so Sam and Ben were really happy to have little travel buddies. The forest was lovely and so peaceful, with the sounds of owls and millions of stars at night.

We spent a windy day and night on the shore of the fresh water lakes Kai Iwi. The lakes looked idyllic and we had a fun few hours on the beach by the water. We had a long drive planned for the next day. We were aiming to make it through Auckland and on to Thames at the start of the Coromandel Peninsula. A flat tyre less than an hour into our journey threw our plans out the window. However, we couldn't believe our luck, really, as we discovered the flat tyre in a town called Dargaville right opposite a tyre garage. The chap who came out to look at it told us we'd been driving on it flat for a while (a friendly mechanic called Craig who was from County Durham and from a little town called Toronto near where Jonny grew up in Shildon. Small world!). Thank goodness we hadn't realised earlier as we'd have been stuck in the countryside. So we left Dougie in their capable hands (it cost us x2 tyres as they could only get hold of another tyre of the same type but of a different thickness so we had to replace both front tyres...).

Two hours later we're back on the road and heading towards Auckland on a Friday evening, at rush hour. We're all getting pretty fed up and there is little chance we could make it past Auckland in the traffic, at least not without a tea break. So we made a 'mayday' call to our friend Barbara and crash landed outside her house. She had the kettle on and toys out for the boys - magic. We ending up spending the night in her driveway after a fun evening and fast food, but not quite what we were expecting at the beginning of the day.