After many years of travelling with 3 caravans, Taupo caravanners, Cyril and Gail ordered a 5th wheeler from Michigan in the US. It was a an Outback Trail all setup for NZ or Australia so no wiring issues. While they were doing that, they also imported their 6.4 litre V8 diesel Ford F350 4 by 4 and what a beast that is.
Cyril with the 6.4 l V8
The whole rig looks amazing and Cyril says it drives really well.
Lots of spaceThe Bedroom
With the slide outs there is plenty of room and it all looks very comfortable with all the mod cons.They’ve recently completed a 5 month trip around the South Island and although they’ve been around most of the North Island, there are still some new places to explore.
We caught up them at the recent Kuratau rally by Lake Taupo.
While we were at Kuratau, we went for a trot through the park at the back of where the rally was and followed the river down to the Taupo lakefront. There are well set tracks and it is an interesting walk through bush and parks.
Amazing Cliffs
Enjoy the images, remember to click on them for hi res
Gary, Fiona and Dianne walking through the park
Fiona, Dianne and Gary on our way back to the Kuratau Rally
Interesting clouds on the lakefront
A real contrast of landscape. Huge cliffs up from the water and really colourful trees and river reeds. There are some houses lucky enough to have a jetty at the bottom of the lawn against the river too.
Kids playing on the lakefront
At the lake front, there is an interesting walk down to a memorial on the lakefront. Some children were happily playing in the water, the sun was shining with no wind. Another nice part of the world.
We haven’t been to a rally for a while and with it being at Kuratau at the bottom of Lake Taupo, our friends from Taupo, Dianne and Gary were keen to go so we were off. We left early on Thursday night and headed for the NZMCA Ardmore park so we could avoid the traffic on Friday morning which worked well as we were in Cambridge having a cuppa at 10:30.
Kuratau
By lunchtime we were cruising up the hill to Gary and Diannes place about to join them for a quick lunch and then were going to head down to Kuratau in convoy. Gary lead the way as he knew the road and we headed from Taupo around the western side of the lake down to Kuratau.
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Rafe and the Xli
An easy 1hrs drive and we were registering and settling Rafe and the XLI down and getting ready for Happy Hour.
From up above on the top plateauRegistration and raffle time. On the right, Fiona, Gary and Dianne
The area was on a beautiful 6 acre property owned by Aucklanders Peter and Sandy, beside the river. They had a bach with a big open stone fireplace and their were two plateaus. We were parked on the bottom level next to the river. As the day went on, the area progressively filled up as more and more vans arrived. Happy hour is always fun and we met some new people and joined in for a couple of the raffles. I don’t remember seeing any of us (the 4 of us) win anything but its all a bit of fun and supporting the Taupo NZMCA.
Tea with the leaves
Chairman Geoff with his swiss cow bell
The wheel
Gary, Dianne, Fiona talking to Cyril and Gail.
Happy Hour
HQ for happy hour
Gary (right) coming out of Dethleffs corner
I met a chap who I knew but had never met from my old days as a newspaper photographer. He worked in Palmerston North on the paper there when I was in Auckland on both the Herald and the Auckland Star. It was really nice to finally meet him as we had lots of common friends. Small world stuff.
Gary about to open the wine… Hopefully!
The weather behaved itself, Geoff and Joyce and the committee did a wonderful job of organising it all and it was nice to see everyone having fun.
Rafe
Kuratau is not somewhere we had been before and its lovely. We’ll be back there for sure. Thanks again to the Taupo committee for a well organised rally and to Peter and Sandy for letting us park on your front lawn. 🙂 It was great to catch up with our friends Gary and Dianne again. A nice weekend having fun!
Rob and Helen were in England visiting one of their daughters. While they were there, they had a thought, where they could buy a new AutoTrail from the factory, cruise around the Uk for 6 months or so and then ship it back to NZ. It was all going well until they found that Kiwis, Aussies and Canadians can only drive up to 3500kg GVM unless they’re on British drivers licenses. Their Tracker has a GVM of more that 4200kgs. Finding it was all getting unnecessarily stressful, they decided on plan B and decided to ship it brand new, to NZ to use and enjoy on NZ roads. By shipping it brand new, they avoided all the fumigating and cleaning that is required for importing a used vehicle😊. 3 years and 20000 k’s later, they’ve travelled through most of NZ with their daughter Chloe. Their AutoTrail Tracker is a nice van which is well kitted out out with Truma heating, Dometic fridge and all the other nice things you’d expect in one of these vehicles. We’ve shared some great trips and great evenings with them including last New Year’s Eve at Sullivan’s Bay (in the rain 🌂🍷😃).
After staying near our friends in Snells Beach, Rob and Helen for Robs birthday (a big round number!), in the morning, they spoiled us with a beautiful big breakfast. I’m not really a big breakfast person but this was amazing and such that I wouldn’t want to eat until late afternoon, despite all the tempting treats in the area.
A lone paddler at Snells Beach
We visited a couple of places a little before and after lunch but still couldn’t be tempted to eat🤗.
Rafe on the waterfront at Whangateau
We ended up staying at the Whangateau holiday park which is an Auckland City run campground like Orewa. They had an off peak deal happening where they were doing a significant discount so we were up for that! 😎 The tide was out when we arrived and it was a bit gloomy initially with the weather, but that improved to the point where stayed an extra night. A lovely spot right on the water.
The next morning it fined up with a nice blue sky so I went for a bit of a walk around the park. It is well set up, a nicely kept dump station, nice clean loos, everything anyone could want!
Isn’t it great when we all get together at a spot in our Motorhomes and over a glass of something cold, all the good ideas come out.
Close up on the doormat
On our last catchup with our friends, Gary and Dianne, Fiona found out about Norwex dish cloths and door mats. The door mats are fantastic as they have different textures on them so not only do they soak up the moisture from wet feet coming into your motorhome but they also pick up bits of grass and stuff too. The tea towel is fantastic as well. It’s the first time I’ve seen a tea towel dry a wine glass without leaving cloudy streaks everywhere. They also seem to keep drying where a conventional tea towel would be saturated. I’m convinced!
These could only be from the well known establishment of Morris & James.
Their pots are amazing with nice colours and they have established a real style. One of the other things I like about this place is the easy parking for big Motorhomes.
Click on the images for Hi res or slideshow Established by Ant Morris with his wife Sue James in 1977 as a pottery, it now features both, nice indoor and outdoor dining areas. A cup of tea and a cake or something more, it’s all there.
We stopped and had a browse through the pottery. They do tours through the factory too if you’re there at the right time.
As I said, I was struck by the amazing colours and the size of the large pots.
While cruising around Matakana on Mother’s Day, we thought we’d pop in to Ascension Vineyard for a little wine tasting and see about buying some nice wine.
Ascension Cellar entrance and carparkRafe tucked away on the left.
This has to be one of the better Motorhome friendly parking places you can stop at. The carpark is huge. We parked in the corner out of everyone’s way and wandered over to the cellar door tasting area. We were greeted by a lovely French woman who really knew her wines.
Some of the wines tasted
Fiona enjoying the comfy chairs
My favourite was a Viognier which apparently is an almost extinct grape as it was allowed to die off in Europe. The story goes that it is quite a picky grape as to where and how it grows. It was imported to Australia and is also now here in NZ. A beautiful wine. I bought a few bottles of their assorted special wines and we left to find a place to stay for the night.
If you’re out Matakana way in your Motorhome, a very easy friendly place stop and have a meal or do some wine tasting.
After having the carpet laid in the van by the carpet layer, we ended up with quite a lot of bits left over.
I cut these up in the high wear areas, like in the Galley, by the Dining table and between the Shower and Toilet area and we had those overlocked too.
The first few trips away, we were nearly driven nuts by the rugs creeping across the floor, and trying to climb or bunch up against the bottom of the walls.
My first attempt at stopping this was after a trip to Mitre 10 where I bought a packet of plastic stuff for $9 that allegedly would stop this but after a trip away(the Shakespeare Park trip ), we decided we were wasting our time.
So I ended up back at Carpet Extreme in Tawa Drive in Albany where I bought the carpet originally, and they put me onto some stuff called Rug Hold. You buy it by the metre (about $32 odd a metre ). I bought 2 metres and it was just enough.. Brilliant stuff and it actually sticks to the carpet like tape.
It sticks to your shoes too while you’re cutting it. 🙂 I’m sure you can buy it from most carpet retailers.
It’s like underfelt with glue on both sides and the feel when you stand on it, is quite different like a really flash underfelt, and you can feel too that it isn’t going to slip around.
If you have this problem, now you know how to solve it !
After spending a couple days with a sudden lurgy and coming right, we needed to get out into some fresh air. Where better than the free parking at Gulf Harbour but by the time we got ourselves organised, it was 3pm. Maybe it might be Shakespeare Park I thought as it would probably be busy at Gulf Harbour. After trucking along the bends and obstacles along the length of Whangaparoa we arrived at Gulf Harbour. It was chocker! No sign of the 3 metre rule even.. Every single space was full. Most unpleasant I thought and dangerous so off to Shakespeare it was.
Auckland City from the beach
My only hesitation with the Auckland Parks is not the money. It’s just the tedious system they have to clock in each time. I tried to be helpful with the nice lady on the phone and suggested that they need someone to write an app for phones or iPads but that didn’t seem to be well received. I thought after I got off the phone that suggestion was probably going to do her out if a job.. Silly me!
Our Neighbours
Anyway, Shakespeare CSC park is a lovely place to stay and well worth the effort. We arrived just as the sun was lowering with a nice red warm tint over everything. With no wind, it was nice and warm. There were a few Motorhomes and a couple of caravans. Three Motorhomers I talked to were quite local, two from Helensville looked like they might be brothers with their families and an older couple from Orewa. Nice.
Remember, you can click on the images for Hi Res or slideshows
Ships waiting out by Rangitoto
Visitors from Hawkes Bay
Pu, one of two Pukekos wandering around
Looking out towards the public parking
Rafe in the Self Contained camp
As it got later, the day trippers all left and we were left to the peace and quiet. We cranked up the Internet to see how it would go. Our neighbours from Helensville couldn’t get data but could get texts so it’s not a flash area for throughput. I did a speed test and got 3.5 Mbps down and 2.8mbs up so not great but about the adsl speeds we used to get in Devonport so based on that, pretty good really. Fiona was back into her movie on Netflix so she was happy.
The Beach
We had a good lie in as it was Sunday.. Be rude not to I thought. I immediately thought of our friends Gary and Dianne who have me on about “not being a morning person” as it got later and we were still lying in the scratcher reading the papers on our ipads😎.
We were a bit shy in the vege department so we got up and scooted along the road to the Manly vege shop and had a wee drive around the Manly waterfront. A few gave us a few strange looks as we got Rafe around the narrow windy back streets but all good. After getting back to Shakespeare, most of our neighbours were leaving or about to leave and we had the place to ourselves.
The eastern camp
Eastern Camp
Eastern Camp
We had some lunch and went for a walk down to see the other campground at the end of the beach for the non self contained. It’s a lovely spot with flashish toilets and a place to wash your dishes. A much bigger park with lots of picnic tables scattered around and rubbish tins. Nicely setup I thought.
Fiona checking out the Beach. Auckland in the distance
Then came a walk along the beach through lots of Oyster catchers and seagulls back to Rafe. A nice place to stay. We’ll be back!
Fiona & Chris, two empty nesters put their dreams of doing something different into reality… Now back in a house, they were living in their Motorhome, come along for the ride.
It was a an Outback Trail all setup for NZ or Australia so no wiring issues. While they were doing that, they also imported their 6.4 litre V8 diesel Ford F350 4 by 4 and what a beast that is.
They’ve recently completed a 5 month trip around the South Island and although they’ve been around most of the North Island, there are still some new places to explore.
Bugger It, we are off - www.buggeritweareoff.com 
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