Sophie and I love New Zealand! We first visited the North Island two years ago for just eight days in a little campervan. We loved the nature, weather and people so much we came back again last year for a month where we mostly explored the South Island with a car and caravan. This year, we wanted to come back to discover more of the warmer North Island. We booked a motorhome from a private party through a website called Camplify, and will be exploring New Zealand in it for 28 days.
We had a brief overnight flight from Brisbane to Auckland, where we picked up the motorhome. After getting used to driving on the left side of the road again, we went shopping for supplies and headed to our first campground just north of Auckland on Red Beach. We spent the first couple nights at this campground to unpack, get acclimated and start planning our next stops. The motorhome has everything we should need: a bed, bathroom, kitchen, dinette, awning, camp chairs, folding picnic table, and ample storage. It is equipped with solar panels, which should come in very handy if we decide to freedom camp along the way. We cooked our first meals with great local ingredients and even did some laundry.
Red Beach is located on the Hibiscus Coast, north east of Auckland, on the Hauraki Gulf. There was a nice, wide beach at low tide we could walk to. The beach is named for its reddish color, which comes from iron-stained fossil shells.
The wind-swept Pohutukawa trees along the beach were beautiful – and reminded us of the bonsai trees we saw in Brisbane. It was great to be back among the giant trees, ferns and grasses. On a different part of the beach, there was an interesting cove carved into one of the cliff faces, and the tidal rocks along the edges were full of snails and hermit crabs. We went swimming one afternoon when the tide was low. The water was refreshing and comfortable once we got in.
It is great to be back in New Zealand!
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