7904 kilometers later

 We knew this was going to be an adventure, but I'm not sure we really knew what kind of adventure we were going to have.  In the end we traveled 7904 kilometers (4911 miles), slept in our tent 47 nights and visited countless playgrounds throughout the country.  We sampled wine, visited museums, went to a dozen swimming pools and built a number of sand castles.  We had our share of meltdowns and only one van breakdown.  We saw all sorts of animals, penguins and dolphins in their natural habit, while lion, tigers and giraffes in their non-natural environment.  We've read some books, baked some pizzas, eaten countless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and taken 1,791 photos.  And now we've packed our 92 kilos (202 pounds) of official checked luggage (let's hope they don't charge for the car seats!) and are trying to figure out how many hours of movies we can watched between New Zealand and California.  Ben declared today that his favorite thing he's done in his entire life was the campervan adventure.  I'd say it was a success.

Taupo

After we all sort of fell apart in Raglan we decided that we needed to take it easy for our last full week in New Zealand.  We had previously organized a rendezvous with our friend Nicole, who lives in Wellington, and the farthest north she could drive was Taupo, so we decided to park it in Taupo.  Since we'd already been to Taupo on this road trip we took the non-tourist agenda and spent the week going to the park, the library, the pool, the gym and the Volcano Center.  Dan took the opportunity to do the Tongariro Crossing, see previous post and go mountain biking with Nicole.  We had a nice time hanging out in Taupo, not a bad place to recollect after many weeks on the road.

Tongariro Alpine Crossing

Dan spent his day hiking the classic New Zealand great walk the Tongariro Alpine Crossing.  The 19 kilometer walk goes through the Tongariro National Park, home to some of New Zealand's active volcanoes.  Dan described the walk as like "walking on the moon."  His alarm went off at 4:45am this morning so he could catch the shuttle to the park.  The hike took him 6 1/2 hours and he was back at the holiday park by 5pm for dinner.  Our day seemed rather tame in comparison, a trip the library, the barber shop and a treat at a local cafe.  

Raglan

We've spent 3 nights in Raglan, a cute little surf town west of Hamilton.  The town has the southern California vibe, surf shops, expensive art and design shops and lots of cafes.  While we didn't go surfing, we enjoyed the chill vibe and the sunshine.

a to z

Here is a collage of Ben's alphabet project.  We're trying to get ourselves organized for his new school in Nevada City.  (We've been a bit slack on this trip in the terms of "formal" education, plenty of real life fun, but... )  So for this project Ben wrote out the alphabet as a treasure map and then we walked around the holiday park looking for all the letters.  I checked them off the "map" and he took a picture with his camera.

Mommy's Super Heroes

These two cuties make me laugh.  Here they are dressed in their Mommy's Super Hero pjs.  We were camped at the holiday park in Raglan, a surf town southwest of Auckland.  They certainly do keep us on our toes!

Auckland Zoo

The Auckland Zoo had been recommended to me by a number of people, so we were all keen to go check it out.  Our first attempt to visit the zoo had been rained out, but thankfully we had another opportunity on the day we had to take Bertie to the airport.  All of us were impressed with the variety of animals, the natural environments for the animals (okay well natural for a zoo setting) and the ease of navigating the zoo.  I enjoyed the lack of commercial feel to the zoo, there weren’t snack shops and gift shops around every corner.  Instead of gift shops there were info stands set up around the park with various environmental information, educating the number of school groups in the park.  I think the vote at the end of the day was that the monkeys were our favorite part.