Roadtrip in New Zealand

Right; onward and upward. I've been told off by my sister for making the blog too morose (fair comment) so let's lighten it up with a whirl around New Zealand in a campervan! And what better way to make this journey even better than by jazzing up the outside of the campervan with the work of a local Kiwi grafitti artist? Our campervan has an artistic impression of top surfer Kelly Slater ruling the waves along its side. Very stylish.

The inside of the campervan, however, is not quite so stylish. Well; it has style...just not very good style. Kinda gawky teenager-esque style. Like, do you remember that time when you though you could pull off a gothic look - with acne? Yeah. Like that kinda style.

But, hey, you can't really complain for $15 each a day now can you? And there's plenty of storage space (all of which is impossible to get to, hehe). My only real concern has been our gas cooker, which tried to blow us up yesterday. Everything was going swimmingly (-perhaps a bad place for a water pun?), then suddenly it all burst aflame. Cue action style slow motion, Bond theme in the background, running for our lives, waiting for the multi-million dollar BOOM to knock us into the air, so we could end up in the dirt with rakish grazes on our brows and artistically placed mud stains on our otherwise curiously undirtied suits/ cocktail dresses. As it was, there was a bit of running, a bit of silence (interrupted by a bit of panting and swearing on my part), and then I turned around to see that the strong wind had mercifully put the fire out. In thanks I have turned my loud mental complaining at bitter cold wind into quiet grumpy mental mutterings. Anyway, we have the gas cooker fixed again now, so we can go back to warmish tuna, pasta and tomato sauce every night. Erm...yay?

When hungry, pasta looks tasty.

The scenery here is amazing, and the roads are very scenic (albeit very bendy). It's sort of like Wales with palm trees.

Yesterday we went Whakarewarewa (no I can't pronounce it either) Thermal Village - bubbling mud pools, geysers, the worlds first (natural) steam cookers, cooking eggs and sweetcorn in a massive crystal blue pool of boiling water. Really nice people, a couple of nice walks and our guide was very informative. The only downside was that the whole place stank of sulphur. Guess that's why they can eat so many eggs...nobody could tell if you farted even if you wanted them to know...maybe I should consider sending my Dad there...

Right, have run out of time!! Will try to write again soon!!