We posted a little yesterday about our first day in New Zealand.  We got to sleep around 10, which is easy to do when in a camper van and it gets dark. I (Mel) forgot it’s summer here, so was thinking it would get dark at 6. I was happily wrong, since it stayed light until 9 or so.  We are currently in our camper van in a holiday park at Sheepworld. It’s 5:something AM… this is what happens when you get to bed early… you wake up before 10am.  I’m not sure how I like this development in our schedule.

Here’s some pictures from our travels up here yesterday; it took maybe an hour to drive from Auckland to Warkworth, where we are now. We’re going to go hiking this morning when it gets light somewhere close by, we can’t remember where and it’s too dark to look it up 🙂

You officially know you're on vacation when you're wearing chacos and sitting on the beach.

We'd barely arrived at the beach, when Eli disappeared. After some searching, I found him lying in a tree, soaking in the scenery!

I set the autotimer on the camera and tried to join him, but look much less natural as a result of the mad dash to beat the 10 second timer 🙂

Our home on wheels for the next 2.5 weeks, parked at our second stop, Moirs Hill Walkway.

A forest view from the walkway. In addition to the palm trees dotting the forest canopy, we also have tree ferns.

Eli and I at the end of our short forest hike to the waterfall

The first thing we saw when we pulled into Sheepworld was this group of pink sheep. I'm not sure what their story is... but they're definitely something I've never seen before.

More pictures on our website:

http://wildsprite.com/gallery/v/honeymoon/NZ/North/

Now, we’re going to go cook us some breakfast (egg and slab bacon breakfast wraps), brush our teeth in tap water for the first time since France (can’t drink India water), and go for our hike on the way to visit Eli’s co-worker’s daughter, Tiana, who lives an hour north of here.

The morning after the we slept in a bit, then walked around Ahmedebad.  We spent some time in the coffee shop people-watching (and looking for camels), and wandered in some jewelry stores along the street.  The jewelers keep the lights and AC off most of the time, and turn it on for you when you come in to browse.  We didn’t end up buying much, just a few books for the plane ride.  We did see some monkeys in our wandering!

We got to the airport right on time for our flight back to Mumbai, which was delayed again (1.5 hours or so), and got to Mumbai right around 11pm.  None of the cabbies knew exactly where we were going, but they took us out anyway and asked for directions along the way. We drove through some pretty impoverished areas, then came to a giant wall and gate with security guards. This was indeed our hotel. The bomb-sniffing dogs ok-ed the cab, and we were dropped off. As I posted before, we ordered room service for dinner (since all the restaurants were closed), then passed out.

On Sunday, we got up, took a walk around the hotel grounds, and had brunch, which was a buffet. They had the biggest assortment of food I’ve seen in a buffet, along with cocktails and desserts. We each stuffed ourselves, then took a nap 🙂 When we got up, we went for a swim in the pool (The hotel pool showers were tiled elephants with 3D trunks for showerheads. We didn’t shower, but I enjoyed the effects.). Then we repacked for our international weight limit (20kg instead of the 26kg for internal India flights), wandered the hotel shops (I got the Pashmina scarf I’d been searching for), and had a late dinner at the Chinese restaurant in the hotel. They had a four-course meal option that was very affordable, and the food was fantastic.

On Monday, the entire day was spent travelling. We left the hotel at 9am in a taxi to the airport, then went through the normal hoops before boarding our ~5 hour flight to Singapore. We had a very short layover there (partly because our flight was delayed), then we flew to Auckland (over 9 hours). We arrived at 11am this morning, making for 24 hours of air travel, counting layovers and time zone changes.

When we got here, we got a shuttle to the Jucy car rental place to pick up our campervan. It’s pretty nice for a sleeper van; we assembled the bed from pieces of the seats, and splurged on an upscale campground; we have electric and water hookups, a communal kitchen area, etc. It’s right next to Sheep World, but it doesn’t open until 9am tomorrow, and we’ll be hiking.

I took some pictures, which I’ll upload first thing in the morning, since my camera is buried under the bed. We drove through beautiful scenery, saw rolling hillsides and beaches, took a hike through the forest to see a waterfall, and walked around the downtown area, all this afternoon. This evening we had pizza and did our laundry.
And now it’s 10pm or so and I’m exhausted. You just don’t get as good a night’s sleep on the plane. So I’m going to give it a go in the camper (Eli’s been snoring next to me the whole time I’ve been typing). Goodnight!