Update after our 12 days in a campervan...

This is me in a hot pool at Hot Water Beach! It feels good!!!!

this is me petting two pigs at Stony Oaks Wildlife Park near New Plymouth, the one in the back I named Coco and the one in the front is named Marshmellow!!

This is me surfing at a festival called Republic Days in the town of Whangamomona!

We went to the cities and towns of Auckland, Raglan, Waitomo, New Plymouth, Taupo, and Hot Water Beach, I think Hot Water Beach was soo cool because you dug into the sand on a beach and then hot water would come up and u would have your owm mini hotub! But u had to be careful because some would start to boil!

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This is from Tracy---
Gillie outlined the major cities and towns we saw.  For fun, google map them and see where we were!  We picked up the campervan (an RV to us) in Auckland on Monday, 17th of January.  We then drove it to Raglan, which is on the west coast of the North Island, and is a "surfing" town...pretty area and cute.  The drive into Raglan told me a bit about what I was in for with NZ driving!  I did not mind the whole driving on the left, or the fact that the campervan is manual transmission (kind of like driving a big tall conversion van with a diesel engine), but I DID mind the narrow, very twisty roads with steep drop offs and no guard rails!!  Pretty much everywhere out of a town the speed limit is 100 kilometers/hour...which is 62 miles per hour.  Sounds fine, until you think about the driving conditions...in some places the "recommended" speed around the curves is 15 kph...or in other words, about 9 miles per hour...but some people prefer to still try to drive faster than that! 

Ok, enough about the driving.

Gillie enjoyed Raglan.  We stayed 2 nights in their "holiday park" (a campground to us) and the holiday park had a nice trampoline but also had a cool "jumping pillow"...we had not seen one of these in the United States.  Basically it is a big inflated pillow on the ground that you can jump on.  It is very similar to a trampoline but safer as you have a bigger area to jump and you can't easily fall off of it. 

It was overcast on 18th Tuesday (I write the dates this way as it is how they do it in NZ!) so we made the mistake of not putting enough sunscreen on, and Gillie got a bit of sunburn from being on the jumping pillow a good portion of the day.  Nothing too serious, just a good reminder that the sun is MUCH hotter here than it is in Wisconsin.

We walked into Raglan from the holiday park, and saw a bunch of small crabs along the waterline...Gillie did NOT like them very much, as there were hundreds of them crawling in and out of their little holes in the sand.
Mom was more interested and watched them a bit.

It was fun to walk into town, we looked at the art gallery and we ate supper there.  At night, we watched DVDs on the DVD player in the campervan.  Our campervan had a couch that pulled out into a bed, a stove, fridge, and sink. 

We left Raglan on 19th Wednesday, and stopped at Bridal Veil Falls, which is just about 45 minutes from Raglan.  This was awesome!!  We could walk right up to the top of the waterfall (scaryto mom but not to Gillie!) and look down, and then see the waterfall 1/2 way down, and again at the bottom.  At the bottom we got a bit wet from the spray (not bad) and saw a couple there with their dog.  The dog was named "Tama" which means "boy" in Maori (the local native population/language).  Tama went in the water and pulled out huge rocks with his mouth!  It was crazy!   We then drove on to Waitomo, to see the glowworm caves.

More to follow on this! 

We miss everyone, and will be able to post more now that we are back in Tauranga, once we get fully settled in next week.  School starts for Gillie on 2nd February.

Gillie standing in front of the bridge from the holiday park to Raglan.  The little crabs all walk along the edge of the inlet.  This waterway leads to the Tasman Sea.

Talk to you all soon...please comment and email us, we love hearing from everyone!
Tracy and Gillie