Beth's Babbles: New Zealand Roadtrip Day 1: Detour North

Friday 21st July was our first day of one month off from work to travel the whole of New Zealand. We packed up our stuff, left Sails Away Backpackers and got some breakfast in town.

The plan was to head south, first stop Hobbiton - but before that, we needed to get our van registered as "self contained". This would enable us to be able to stay at certain campsites that are cheap or free but only for self contained vehicles (have a sink and toilet). We rang up the dude and found out he couldn't actually do it for us so we got an appointment for Tuesday. Not ideal, but we decided instead of going south we would travel the very northern tip of the country and then go to our Tuesday appointment on the way back down.

So northward bound we were, feeling free and without direction, we zigzagged across the country from Warkworth, to Dargaville, to Whangarei, where we went to the cinema to see Dunkirk (great film!) before spending our first night sleeping in the van at a free campsite by Lake Waro. The weather wasn't great, but it was surprisingly warm and comfortable in the van. We enjoyed watching lightening storms in the distance, and then settled down to Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers before bed.

Joe and I loved how Whangerei was a city with a waterfall right in the middle of it.

These ducks obviously loved it too

Heading north gave us a good practice go in the van before embracing the bitter cold of the south.

The next morning I craved cheese and crusty bread for breakfast (after watching Gimli eat it in the film), so we stopped in Kawakawa on the way north to get some. This tiny town only had a small convenience store amongst it's other shops. To our disturbing surprise, our breakfast dreams were ruined upon opening the brie to find it mouldy and a week out of date! Top tip: do not eat the brown brie. We took it back and exchanged it and all was right with the world again!

The weather hadn't cleared up since we left Warkworth, and it was unfortunate that it wasn't really great conditions to get to see the beautiful beaches this region has. We will however head back up here in the summer as it's not too far from where we live. We continued north for a short while before U-turning as we decided "screw the plumber!" we can get self contained along the way if needed, so we headed back down south and I definitely got a bit more excited. Next stop, Hobbiton!