These boots are made for walking....

I was convinced our flight to New Zealand was going to take  5-6 hrs. In fact it was only 3 ½ hrs – plus another 2hr+  time difference which means we are even further away from UK time. As you would expect, I read the border entry form very carefully & declared that we did indeed have boots & we had walked on soil (not water)  in the preceding 30 days,  and I was confident our boots would pass inspection. Mr L finds it highly amusing that I feel the need to scrub our boots every time we fly, but I hate the idea of being held up as a poor scrubber as it were. So, as you can imagine, I was absolutely mortified when the boots were  were inspected & deemed to be ‘contaminated’ & removed by the customs officer for cleaning. I felt judged & rightly so.  It also meant that we took 1 1/2 hours to get out of the airport. We called our car rental company, ‘lucky’  to collect us. We weren't quite so lucky when we were handed the keys to a sad looking Nissan that had seen better days but we had only paid £20 p.day so we were fine with it. We wanted to have a Camper van for our whole time in New Zealand but we weren't able to get one for the first 5days so we rented a car instead,  with the plan to explore places to the North of Auckland then drive back, swap the car for a van and continue with our tour of NZ. 
I have to confess that when lots of people asked us before & since we set off ‘which island are you going to’, I had no idea which was which, which Town was on which island & whether we should be going to both or just one and if so which one?  So my response was always vague. As you will be aware from our blog planning our travels is pretty much on the go & this time was no different. We had contacted family for their ‘best places to go’ advice & that forms the basis of our travel plans. I should add  that pretty much most of Mr L’s family have been to NZ so I am therefore legally obliged to include more details of the places we go to and the towns we visit, so they can relive their experiences. They are not to be messed with.
We arrived at our guest house on the edge of Auckland, grabbed some food, connected to the wifi, laid out our free maps & secondhand (recently purchased from a charity shop) NZ guidebook circa 2007, and planned the next few days &, with the help of airbnb we booked 3 nights accommodation. Sorted. Then we drove into downtown to explore the city of Auckland. Not the best place to start I would say. Perhaps because the sky had clouded over, or because we were tired,  but we were v unimpressed with the place. We headed back to our guesthouse  in the hope that NZ would offer us a lot more the next day. Thankfully it did. We hadn't given ourselves too much driving to do on day one of our trip, so the first stop was Warkworth. As soon as we left Auckland the scenery kicked in. Stunning. Rolling hills, the greenest fields contrasted against the bluest skies & lots of winding roads.  Along the way we stopped off at a beach and did what we normally do, strolled along it and then back again. 
Our next port of call was at Waiwera thermal spa resort, where we boiled our bodies in 38degree water, then immersed ourselves in the ‘movie pool’ where they were showing “Petes Dragon” – quite a bizarre concept, then we got a fit of the giggles as we rode rubber rings down the laziest lazy  river ride ever - I'm sure you can just picture it - before Mr L hit the zooms, whilst I opted to record his landings for posterity. All good fun. Our accommodation was a modern, self contained apartment above a garage & v nice it was too. Such a contrast to life in a Camper van. We had a tour of the town then sat on their veranda in the sun reading. Perfect. I could get used to it. Later we drove down to Snells Bay & Algies Bay where we sat and admired the views before calling into the appropriately named 'Liquorland' for some refreshments on the way back to town.