1 Days on the Road
It’s finally here!!!
Walking down Auckland’s Queen Street toward our campervan, the excitement overload hit us! It was like waking up on Christmas Day. After weeks of anticipation: buying a campervan, preparing it, and planning our New Zealand’s Biggest Gap Year, the day had finally come! It’s time to hit the road.
A few hours later, we are sat in a holiday park in Thames, Coromandel, at 3pm. It’s dark and skies have exploded on us with torrential rain. What?
See ya later, Auckland
Day 1, the campervan was ready to leave its parking spot at the Silverfern Hostel. We said our goodbyes to Dom, the hostel owner, who has been amazingly kind helping us out with the DIY jobs. We thanked him a million times for his help before pulling our beast of a campervan out into the Auckland’s chaotic rush hour traffic. Oh yeahhhh.
Oh how we laughed as we headed south on the quiet side of the motorway towards The Coromandel while watching the traffic jam on the other side of the road going into the city…
“This is the first…”
Today was a day of “firsts”. For instance, every little thing we have done today in the campervan has been declared as: “This is the first…” or: “This is the first time in this campervan…” starting with our grocery shopping. “This is the first time we have pushed our shopping trolley all the way home!” Which, of course, was just in the car park of Pakn’Save.
Driving into Middle-earth
About one hour out of Auckland, the landscape changed to the rolling green hills you see so much The Lord of the Rings. This is when you know you are out of the city and in Middle-earth. We celebrated by doing the road trip cliché of singing along to stupidly loud music. (We’re sure there was a LOTRs violin cover by Lindsey Stirling in there, actually. We wanted to be on theme but, damn, that’s a bad cover).
As we approached Thames, we could see the Coromandel mountain range looming in the distance, which Thames sits at the base of. We tried to identify the mountain we thought we’d be climbing tomorrow to the Pinnacles. (Visit us on tomorrow’s blog post).
Dickson Holiday Park
“Our first holiday park, on our first night, in our first New Zealand location… Ahhh!”
Admittedly, we even filmed the “first parking of the campervan in a powered site” then “the first time we plugged the campervan into the powered site…” Oh Gawd… We probably deserved it when the water pump “broke for the first time!” But, because Robin is all DIY knowledgeable now, he fixed the issue straight away. No worries, mate!
The Dickson Holiday Park in Thames was pretty cool, surrounded by forest, near bush walks, and with some resident roosters. The sound of tui could be heard all around… Until, BAM, rain rain everywhere! We decided that instead of listening to tui, we would drink the Tui (beer) until the rain passed and we could go exploring.
Rocky’s Goldmine Walk
At last, it stopped being rainy for a second for us to check out the Rocky’s Goldmine Walk. The forest trail at the entrance of the Dickson Holiday Park was a 3-hour stroll into some native forest absolutely teeming with birds! It’s pretty cool to see so much wildlife on the first day. What’s more, the loop track had a few of swimming spots which would be great if it wasn’t on the verge of winter right now.
Scrambling on the Rockys Goldmine Walk
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Want more?
Yeah, you do! We are pretty excited to explore the Coromandel Peninsula, especially, because there are all these things to do:
- 10 Features That Make The Coromandel Unique
- Coromandel – Guide for Backpackers
- 22 Stunning Beaches in New Zealand
Until our next blog post, how about following our behind-the-scenes nonsense on Instagram?
See you tomorrow for Day 2 of our New Zealand road trip!
