The sheer boredom of car hunting

Photos:

1) Onemana Beach, Coromandel

2) With the Dowgrays: me, Antonia, Carol, Steve, Dorothy, John

3) In our "private" spa pool, Hot Water Beach, Coromandel

4) Welcome drink, Auckland Harbour

5) Steve in the campervan

6) Tongariro National Park

7) Shorts and T Shirt weather at Lake Taupo

8) The Taihape gumboot

9) "River Anduin" - actually Steve a bit terrified of the drop at the Bungee Jump on the Rangitikei

10) Ohau Point, north of Kaikoura - NZ fur seal

11) Motunau Beach - a diversion specifically to visit a circle on the map!

We always said we'd be buying a car to drive around New Zealand in when we arrived, and scout out possible places to live. We spent a couple of days acclimatising and doing stuff like opening a bank account before heading off for a weekend with family friends the Dowgrays who had kindly invited us to spend the long Waitangi Day weekend with them, daughter Antonia and her friend Carol in a beach house in the Coromandel. Waitangi Day is the anniversary of the signing of the treaty of Waitangi between Maori tribes and Europeans - in itself a not too unreasonable treaty, but it has been systematically ignored by governments, depriving Maori of their land rights. This means Waitangi Day often sees protests - this year we didn't hear of much but we did see a photo of a canoe race in which Maori warriors heroically paddled a war canoe while their European competitors sank (poetic justice perhaps?!)

At the Coromandel my old school friend Antonia (second from left) cooked us up feasts each evening, including seafood fritters from pipis and cockles gathered on the shore (something of an NZ tradition!) Steve and I ventured out to the famous Hot Water Beach where for the price of shovel hire you can create your own private (or not so private, on the busiest weekend of the year) spa pool filled by a natural hot water spring.

Back in Auckland we discovered buying a car was easier said than done as we were looking for a manual hatchback and at least 75% of cars over here are automatics (they're imported from Japan). We spent a miserable couple of days driving (the hire car) around Auckland's suburban car yards and getting a good look at areas we definitely DON'T want to live in. We found a couple of possible cars but with the dealers refusing to negotiate and nothing suitable coming out of private sales we were getting pretty annoyed. We just managed to have our welcome drink in the muggy Auckland evening before sweating it out in 100% humidity overnight and finally deciding that driving around suburbia probably wasn't the best way to spend our hard earned cash.

Just at this nadir of emotion we hit lucky with a campervan relocation deal - $1 a day to drive a luxury van from Auckland to Christchurch. We bit their hands off to take it and headed off down Highway 1 as fast as we could. You only get 4 days to complete the journey which doesn't allow much time for having fun (it's around 15 hours and 1000km), but we did manage to see some of the gushing Waikato River in Taupo, the lake itself, take a diversion to one of the locations for the Lord of the Rings (River Anduin - recognise it anyone behind Steve's terrified expression?)

In Wellington all I managed to do was lose my wallet on the bus. This is more stupid than it sounds since I'd actually lost it 3 days previously in Auckland and got it back when someone found it and handed it in. No such luck this time and I felt a fool though fortunately didn't lose much money.

From Wellington to Christchurch the weather was absolutely appalling. It had been very warm when we left Auckland (over 30) but got down to 12 degrees north of Christchurch with constant rain. We were very glad of the van to sleep in instead of having to be in a tent. We did manage to visit two places along the way - the seals at Ohau Point (very close to the place Mum circled on our NZ map!) and Motunau Beach which Alice Hindle circled. Both lovely but it was freezing when we were there.

Anyway we're now in Christchurch and back to the slog of car purchasing, possibly the most boring activity I can think of. We are not feeling very optimistic but hoping if the weather warms up we will feel a little better about it all.