Back in town

Excuse us for slow follow up, but it is not easy to get internet connection from the middle of a field.

As you all know we rented our spaceship, and the first thing sunday morning we went to look for a car at a big car market. We found a Nissan Vanette wich is just big enough for us and the luggage. The guy selling it was a bit weird, he was dutch. But we got the car checked out by an independant mechanic and everything was cleared. We arranged to pick it up from his house the following sunday, as we had the spaceship for a week.

You should be able to see a picture of the new Vanette, we call her Twalf. We would like to say thank you to everyone who has donated money, it was because of you that we where able to afford her. And be assured we are going to do everything we can to fullfill the challenges you set us. As you can see we have allready started.
( just in case people wondered why I was standing in NZ with my uniform on!)

And so sunday afternoon we set of on our roadtrip, we travelled around the Coromandel Peninsula. We had a relaxing week of stunning views and some really lovely campsites.
The best ones are the DOC (department of conservation) campsites, where you are lucky to have toilets (meaning a hole in the ground with a toilet seat on top!) and running water.
Saying that, you are as close to New Zeeland nature as you can get.

We went to places like Cathedral cove, Cooks beach, Shakespeares cliff, Lonely beach. Wednesday we had a drink at a local whinery while we where sitting underneath a kiwi tree. The bar was owned by a girl who had been a roady for the rolling stones and other groups... She was sick of life on the road and had taking the bar over 6 months ago.

Thursday we went to the hot water beach. You can only get there if the tide is out, so we had to be there for 8 in the morning. It`s a place where there is a lot vulcanic acitivity right onder the earths service, and so if you dig a hole in the sand and let the water run in, you can sit in a hot water bath. You even have to wait a minute before you sit in it or you could burn your botom.
It really does get that hot, we didn`t dig a hole, because the tide was allready coming back and we forgot to bring a spade, but we did dig our feet in the sand. We nearly got blistered feet and we where only a couple of inches deep.

And so after sleeping on the floor or in a car, we decided we would like to have a bed for a night.
We had to bring our spaceship back and pick up the car, so last night we stayed in a youthhostel and did some laundry, ready for the next part, heading up North to Cape reinga.

Yesterday it rained, it was 15 degrees but it did rain. And so we have had some bad luck to. As you can tell eveything here is going well, and we are loving every minute of it!
Hoping everyone back home is allright and missing you all.
lots of love
Kimberley, Ine, Katleen