Day 1 on the Road
The First Day of New Zealand’s Biggest Gap Year
Join us on our first day of New Zealand’s Biggest Gap Year: 365 Days in New Zealand doing 365 Activities! The adventure begins with doing the Rockys Walk in Thames, Coromandel.
Man, today we finally hit the road.
We’re going an a campervan trip woop woop woop.
I am just pumped.
After months of preparation we’re finally ready to go on this campervan road trip adventure.
The Auckland traffic in the centre of Auckland was pretty chaotic but once we hit thew highway
we were on obviously the quiet side of the highway going south to Coromandel.
As soon as you get out of Auckland the roads are much quieter and you can sort of relax
a little bit.
We were singing along to awesome music.
We both have very different tastes in music.
We can’t simultaneously enjoy music.
So we came up with a system: one CD’s going to be hers one CD’s going to be mine.
This camper doesn’t go above 80 kilometres an hour for you Americans that’s not enough
miles per hour.
We’re driving through beautiful farmland, stunning mountain ranges and even coastline
we got like a little bit of everything today.
We finally arrive at Thames.
The i-SITE is hidden behind a war memorial museum which has a big cannon on the front.
Easy to find.
We had lunch in the campervan for the first time, yayyy.
Robin made a few sandwiches.
Cheese and tomato.
Can’t go wrong with that.
We notice there’s a Department of Conservation sign for the Rockys Walk so we thought we’d
go see what that is all about.
So we pack up all the gears, head up the mountain.
It starts off pretty mellow actually like it’s all well-gravelled and the autumn leaves
are scattered all in front of you.
Then the track seems to sort of deteriorate and you have to make your way over tree roots
and steps just made from other footsteps really.
When you get to the top there’s some pretty cool views over Thames and the nearby towns
actually and out to sea.
It was actually quite nice it was really cool to get to do a hike right out of the gate.
So the next place we’re going to is the holiday park we’re going to be staying in: Dickson
Holiday Park.
It’s only about 10 minutes away from Thames.
So we just park in the easiest spot.
It’s easy as just plugging it in then you’ve got power to your campervan.
Sweet!
Then we can charge all our cameras.
We turn the pump on, turn the tap on and nothing’s coming out.
Robin went from having a big grin on his face to shear disappointment.
So I’m going to try to fix it.
It’s about to rain down like crazy.
It’s time for bed.
Even though it was chucking it down with rain it still didn’t dampen our spirits.
[Manic laughter].
Okay.
