So now we're at Raglan Bay on the West Coast of the North Island. We're on a campsite, plugged into the power, sat in our van, drinking cold beer out of our fridge. We've had our first meal cooked in the mini kitchen (thanks Ben, it was lovely!) and will shortly be setting up the bed (and discovering if Ben fits in it!). The plan is for a few relaxing days on the beach. Well that's my plan anyway! Hopefully Ben can do some surfing and then I can get some peace to lie in the sun and do nothing :0)
It's actually the hottest weather they've had in New Zealand in over a hundred years. It was 32.4 degrees C and 100% humidity in Auckland recently. After the unbearable heat of Chile and Argentina it doesn't feel all that hot to us but the weirdest thing is that all this is going on whilst the UK has the worst snow for 25 years! I must admit that I am a little bit jealous when I hear everyone's sledging and snowman building stories but I'm sure the novelty of the snow will wear off a lot quicker than that of the beach in the sun. So I shouldn't complain :0)
It's so funny; nothing actually happens here. Well nothing really bad anyway. A loud siren went off earlier which called all the voluntary firemen to action (apparently almost the whole fire service is voluntary) and we could see smoke in the distance. The whole town had an air of excitement about it. It's obviously the most interesting thing to happen here for months! Don't believe me? The national weekend newspaper today's front-page headline is... "Couple accused of rent scam". Amazing!
I definitely feel that coming to New Zealand was the right thing to do. It's early days obviously and it's sunny and I don't have to start work yet and all that, but I really do love it. It feels like home - only better!! Ben's apparently "reserving judgement" before stating any opinion on the subject of whether he likes it or not other than to say "it's alright" (like a teenage boy!) but I'm convinced he's going to love it too.
A few days later...
Well all didn't go exactly to plan. We did have some well appreciated beach time and explored Raglan, which is a friendly slightly arty/hippy little beach town, but Ben never did get to do any surfing. As we were about to drive to the surfing beach we discovered that we had flattened the engine battery. Duh! (There are two batteries in the campervan; one for the lights and fridge and stuff and the usual engine one, and it turned out that we'd been using things that run off the engine battery rather then the other one.) But to cut a long story short a lovely Kiwi couple, with the biggest motorhome I have ever seen (which they let us have a look around!), came to our rescue and Margery is good as new :0) (Ben is also very keen for me to mention that he's been hard at work with his newly acquired tool kit and beloved WD40 and has now fixed the slightly dodgy door. Well done Ben, extra testosterone points for you!) We'd have both been happy to spend a few more days in our little beach haven but unfortunately the rain has set in, so we're off.
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