And it was all going so well...

SPOILER ALERT: Anyone who's a bit fed up with reading about what an amazing time we've been having is going to like this post...

The beast
New Zealand was the top of the list for both Duncan and I in terms of destinations, so we were very excited to finally have 6 whole weeks to explore it.  Unfortunately, that excitement quickly turned to despondency as things started to unravel pretty much as soon as we'd arrived.  We got into Auckland very late last Tuesday, and on Wednesday lunchtime picked up our motorhome.  We'd booked a motorhome for the entire 6 week period, with a romaticised dream of driving round magical landscapes and doing lots of hiking and exploring on foot.  Unfortunately the first 4 days turned out to be anything but.  The motorhome we picked up was huge, officially sleeping 6, it was definitely spacious enough for the 2 of us.  We had our run through on how it worked, and off we set. 

Meanwhile, I was very aware that my throat was feeling like I'd got a couple of golfballs stuck in it, and within hours was more or less confined to lying in the back, sleeping while a nasty cold/flu took hold.  Not the best start, and poor Duncan left on his own to figure out our route as we headed north from Auckland into Northland.  Over the next 3 days we travelled between Orewa, Russell (Bay of Islands) and Kauri Coast - all of which were beautiful, but which I wasn't really in any state to fully appreciate.  I do remember a gorgeous sunset over Russell Bay and taking short walks into the Waipoua Forest to see the oldest surviving Kauri tree, which is estimated to be 2000 years old.

Tane Mahuta
This part of N Island is an interesting mix of Cotswolds-like scenery, but a tropical element thrown in.  And the forests are gorgeous.  They used to cover the entire Northland, but logging of the Kauri trees between late 1800s to mid 1900s destroyed almost all of them.  Valued for their immense height and girth, and also for their gum, the intense decimation of them has left the remaining population fragile and heavily protected.  The ancient Tane Mahuta, the oldest remaining tree, is held in Maori cosmology as the son of the sky father and earth mother.  In reality it is as close to the Tree of Life in Avatar that you'll ever get.  If you look closely in the picture, you can see the colour of people's shirts at the foot of the trunk. It gives a perspective on just how big these trees can grow, with time.  Tane Mahuta's trunk is 17.7m high, and 13.8m around.  The full tree height is 51.5m.  It is majestically enormous.

As the 3 days wore on, we started to realise that our motorhome was not up to scratch.  Each day we found more things wrong with it, and coupled with the long drives we became very disillusioned with the idea of another 6 weeks living in it.  To the point that we headed back to Auckland, ready to get on a plane back to the UK, rather than keep it.  Annoyingly, no matter of explanation to the rental company, despite our despair, was enough for them to budge from their T&Cs.  We had to keep the van, or a replacement.  Long story short (although it was a very unpleasant day to put it mildly) we were given a replacement, and figured we'd have to give it another week or so before making any final decision to go home early.  I know this all sounds very dramatic, but we were both very low by this point... (and I know people don't necessarily like reading about negative experiences, but this blog is about our travels, and it would be wrong to gloss over it)
Omapere
Anyway, the good news is that my cold was on the way out, and we vowed the next morning to try to turn this around. A few nice conversations with some NZ contacts we'd been given helped immensely. (Thank you Elaine.) I'm going to leave this post here.  We have had a fun couple of days since, which I'll add shortly, so don't worry - we're not about to call it quits on New Zealand!  It is a beautiful country (but bloody expensive and hasn't moved much out of the 1970s in terms of customer service) and I'm quite sure that we will be blown away in the next few weeks by what it has to offer.

Right, we'd better go find a free campsite for the night....

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