We left the luxury of the Sydney hotel behind at 6:30am and were in the air by 9:30am (the first flight to leave on time!). Touching down in Auckland at 2pm local time we made our way through customs, being sniffed by dogs as we went. Dogs not looking for drugs or explosives mind, no, these were trained to sniff out fruit and vegetables!

The Jucy Rentals rep picked us up from the arrivals hall and took us the short distance to collect what will be our home for the next three weeks - The Jucy Chaser! A converted Toyota Hi-Ace to the untrained eye, it had everything we need to call it home. A shower, sink, DVD player and the all important fridge for keeping the beer and wine cool. We stopped at a supermarket to get some essentials and we hit the open road and headed north. It really was the open road too, around Auckland is possibly the busiest part of New Zealand and yet there hardly seemed to be much traffic on the roads at all.

Not intending to drive much on our first day here we made for the coast just north of Auckland and after a couple of fruitless stops we ended up in a small place called Martin's Bay. It was Saturday evening and the beach is obviously well liked by the locals as one after another, small boats made their way to the shore and were winched on to trailers and driven home. We set up the camper for our first night, made it a bit homely and turned in.