Jali's Journey: On the Road

We are now well and truly 'on the road' and frustrations with the van/seatbelts and being stuck in Auckland are now a distant memory. Dougie is now 'home' and we are now on our fourth campsite so we feel we are becoming more and more adept at setting up the van on arrival and packing her up when it's time to move on (we now don't need to pull over soon after we've set off to repack something that has flown loose, like the fridge door and contents after a left turn...) Pulling away down the highway to our first campsite destination at Ruakaka with the boys happily strapped in the back in their seats felt soooo good! (ok, Ben did cry quite a bit on that journey to be honest but he happily climbs into his seat now!). The view from the van window for that first night could not have been more perfect: a beautiful view out towards the sea and distant headland with ducks and seabirds nesting on the wetlands.

Our next site was a more rustic, hillside setting on The Farm: a real backpacker/WOFER hangout. Very chilled out and the owners, Mike and Ellie were super friendly. The Farm is a working dairy farm but mainly gets income from school groups who come to camp and do the activities on offer such as kayaking, horse-riding and motorcross riding. The boys loved our 2-night stay there (even though we were surrounded by many machines/tools/hazards that we had to ensure the boys did not maim themselves on...). We went to help feed the calfs and pigs one morning and slowly kayaked down a river another afternoon. Sam enjoyed making friends with the young workers there and happily joined them in the lounge to watch episodes of The Simpsons on the TV. Ben is thrilled by any pet or wildlife he sees which is great although he goes to extremes and bellyflops on to hapless dogs in a manner not always welcome by the poor animal.

A 1-night stay near the charming coastal town of Russell saw us eating delicious pies from the local bakery, strolling down the old pier to buy souvenirs and viewing the beautiful Bay of Islands from the hilltop before we caught the short vehicle ferry across the bay to Paihia.

Dougie is serving us well and has been going slow and steady up and down the (sometimes very) steep and windy roads. Our longest journey so far has been about 1.5hrs so it's all pretty manageable for the boys. However, an unfortunate error this afternoon saw us (Jonny) reverse Dougie into a ditch and got the back of the truck hooked and dug into a grass ditch - wheels spinning and no way out!. A panicked and stressful time, particularly as we were in the Waitangi National Reserve (this is the most important and historic site in NZ!). However two local chilled out Kiwi's who were passing thankfully helped us out of our fix with a tow from his truck. We quickly made haste after patching up the churned up turf as best we could, hoping no one would notice our unintended vandalism of the precious land.

However, we enjoyed a very worthwhile trip to the Waitangi Treaty Ground and Museum with a tour and 'Cultural Performance'. The site is beautiful, the museum very good and the tour and performance really interesting and enjoyable. We learnt a bit about Maori culture too. The icing on the cake was that one of the performers of the traditional Maori dances, haka and warrior moves was the kind guy who helped us get Dougie unstuck the day before. Embarrassing...