Road trip for nothing

So we have a hire car at the moment so we can drive around the sprawling suburbs of Auckland looking for a Biff (campervan) which will be our mobile home for the next year. We looked at a few vans yesterday but the selection in our price range is limited so we decided to look further a field. To quote Finch from American Pie “God bless the internet” which is making this possible for us to find these vans. One that looked particularly nice was being sold in a town called Tokeroa. Now on the map it didn’t look too far but due to the fact that New Zealand doesn’t really have motorways, it was a 6 hour round trip. Well, we didn’t have anything else planned and have unlimited mileage on the car so we thought we’d go for a look.

We struggled our way out of the city through the traffic and hit the relative calm of highway 1. Well, it would have been calm except for the constant road noise! It seems roads in New Zealand are coated with a kind of tarmac that sounds like driving over a cheese grater. No joke it was literally like sleeping inside a jet engine……..on a building site where the workmen are using pneumatic drills………..and are being hit with tambourines by Howler monkeys…………..who are playing electric guitars with their Marshall amps turned up to 11!! OK OK, so that may be an exaggeration but believe me, it was frickin loud. Not usually a problem if you can turn up the radio but, maybe due to the hills, no station broadcasted for longer than 10 minutes before it all turned to static. No real loss to be fair as it seemed all radio stations here broadcast from the inside of a tunnel making the presenters all sounded like butch lesbians with cardboard boxes over their heads! All quite bizarre. Thank god I brought my ipod for the rest of our travels.

Thank god then for the scenery. The Lonely Planet, the well known travel guide, not to be confused with The Lonely Island – who wrote the awesome “Jizz in my pants!” song, recently claimed that the UK is the most scenic island in the world. I agree on some levels. I have not travelled the length and breadth of the UK but I’ve seen enough to say that we do live in a totally stunning little corner of the world. That said, I’m not sure The Lonely Planet must’ve paid much attention in New Zealand. We only drove 3 hours out of Auckland and were amazed by the scenery in places. It is difficult to describe, and a camera just won’t do it justice. It reminded me of parts of Wales, mixed with the Highlands of Scotland with a hint of the Lake District. All mingled in with teletubby land and Jurassic park! It’s so green and there is just so much vegetation. We passed beautiful rivers and rolling green hills and we’re not even in the scenic parts yet! I just can’t wait to get our van and explore the rest of the country.

So, we made it to Tokeroa and were thoroughly disappointed with the van we saw. Well over priced for it’s condition, no character and a old smelly diesel engine. We took it for a test drive and as I feared with it’s old diesel engine, it really struggled up the mellow hills around the town, there was no way it would cope in the southern Alps of the South Island. We soon sacked the idea and headed back to Auckland. We had seen another van last night and although we were initially sceptical about a private sale, we’ve made the guy an offer and he accepted. Yay!! So if all goes to plan we are picking up Biff on Friday morning. Just in time to leave Auckland and drive up to see Derby Danny and Catherine in Whangerei (pronounced Fongeray).

So, will post a few pics of our new addition after we pick him up and when we get to Danny and Catherines. Very excited. Just have all the fun stuff like sorting out insurance to do now. Yay!

Peace

D

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