Road kill-NZ style

Dead possum count today=17

Well we're off camping now after a short stay in Auckland. We stayed for three days and had a quick look round, which is all it needed really, we walked around most of the city in one after noon. Without realising we walked straight into a st paddy's day parade, which came free with a terry wogan lookalike!

We visited the city casino in the skytower (the tallest buildingin the southern hemisphere) and blew a wacking $2 on some kind of fruit machine that we couldn't work out how to play... We caught a ferry across the harbour to climb up an extinct volcano cone which gave a great view of the city skyline.

After the hot temperatures of raratonga, we're struggling to cope with the cold temperatures-it's only 24 degrees.

After Auckland we hired a car and set off north. We both sat in the car park of the hire place discussing whether or not to take out the extra insurance to reduce the excess from 2500 to 250 dollars... we wimped out and decided to pay the extra, but on the upside we can now try and jump the car over rivers, for a very small financial risk!

The scenery is stunning, with jungle like forests mixed in with palm trees, the land scapes seem to go on forever and they almost make you feel dizzy as you drive towards them. There are great beaches which we've been able to camp by on most nights watching the sun set.

On our second day out of Auckland we drove to the cape at the most northern point of NZ, which feels pretty strange to look out over the sea with nothing in front of you as far as the eye can see. After visiting the cape we swung by the biggest sand dunes you've ever seen. It was like something out of Star wars, and it looked like R2D2 and C3PO should appear at any second.

Anyway, we hired a couple of sand boards, and climbed to the top, it felt like we were both going to have heart attacks as the dune was so steep, but it was worth the climb, to slide back down.

We then headed south to a forest with some of NZs biggest trees, we saw one that they think is over 2000 years old, and it looked massive!

We're now planning to travel through the centre of the north island, seeing a few glow worms and hot springs on the way. We head across to the south island on the 30th march.

Tinternet access has been a little sparse, but we'll keep updating as and where we can.

After a week without meat, we're both looking forward to some chicken with our pasta tonight, cooked on our own little campmaster stove!