Winery and sheep.

The next morning, we went down to the same dining room and had breakfast. We made the mistake of ordering the buffet. You can’t imagine the horror. There was a buffet dish with fried eggs, which looked as though they had been in there for hours. Another buffet dish had mushy spaghetti. I thought I’d get some croissants or muffins and fruit. The baked goods had also obviously been under the heat lamp for hours, if not days. The fruit was mostly out of cans and no telling how long they had been there. Everything else about the hotel was really nice, but I would advise anyone to avoid the buffet at all costs!

Kenrick was scheduled to pick us up mid-morning and he was right on time. He suggested I sit in the front as he drove, and I automatically went around to the right side of the van. Well, surprise! There was a steering wheel there! I’m sure I wasn’t the first overseas visitor to do this. Once that was sorted out, it was about a 20-30 minute drive to his “depot”.

Kenrick runs his operation from his home in the suburbs. He has about 9 campervans. He’s very friendly and chatty and offered us tea or coffee as we went over the documentation, rules of the road, suggested itineraries, an overview of the van itself and it’s systems, etc.   This was good, but I could see the minutes passing away and our first day’s adventures getting leaner and leaner.

We wanted to head north a bit, and then continue southward in a loop of central North Island.   Finally, we were on the road.

The airport and New Zealand Frontiers were located south of Auckland and we had to navigate highways and bridges to get to the north of the city. The bridge was rather impressive, but the suburbs beyond went on for quite some way. Then suburbs disappeared into lush, green, meandering two-lane highways.  The forests were composed of tree ferns for the most part. These were the kind of tree ferns that in California you spend lots of time, money, and energy to grow and here they were in the wild and growing prolifically.

We got off the highway at Warkworth and found a supermarket. Parking was tight and we ended up driving a block or two down the road to be able to comfortably park the campervan. We stocked up on provisions to last several days and headed east.

Our first stop was at a Matakena winery, Brick Bay Wines. I had picked this particular winery because it offered a Sculpture Walk in addition to wine tasting. The Glass House was also a nice feature.

The Sculpture walk was $12/pp, but this was vacation and a walk would do us good. It was very interesting and went through a lot of different microenvironments. The Glass House overlooked the lagoon and you could purchase appetizers or meals to enjoy there or go outside in the patio where they had a kid’s play area. The wine was excellent and we purchased a few bottles for our journey.

Next up was Piroa Falls. It was located down a gravel road (the first of many!), but the walkway itself was about 5 minutes. There was a geocache there, which we never found. The falls were cool, and we were the only ones there, but nothing crazy-special. Then on to Waipu Caves.

Waipu Caves were located in a remote area and we entered a gate to a wide-open field.   There was one other campervan there and a group firing up a bonfire, as well as another car with a tent nearby. It was a rather open field and Fred and I went to the sign that marked the cave entrance because another geocache was supposed to be there. We couldn’t find that either and the sun was setting so we decided to prepare dinner. Little did we know that the dinner show would be of the drunken teenagers trying to do wheelies in the wet grass. I kept chanting to myself, “Don’t hit the van, don’t hit the van.”

The night ended without incident, the teenagers disbanded and we had our first night in the campervan.

The Adventure Continues>>>