The van

We are now over the jetlag, just about! Yesterday was a crazy day, we decided to look into vans and how much they were to buy and looked at various vans online to get an idea of cost, as we were walking through the street a van drove by with a for sale sign in the window. It looked like a business van with 'tea/coffee/snacks' written across the side and lots of orange bubbles. We flagged the van down and a Czec couple got out, they had been travelling in the van for two months and were leaving NZ in a couple of days so really needed to sell it. The van looked really tidy and was a Toyota Hiace which is what we had been advised to buy... the only problem was it was too much money. We said if they didn't sell it to give us a call and we would make them an offer. We didn't think much more about it and went to watch Harry Potter at the cinema, it was really nice to do something so normal! Sam enjoyed the film but realised how much better the book is (a good lesson I think).

That evening we called the people about the van and made them an offer (much lower than their asking price) they said no and so we decided that the next day we would get a bus down to see Ellie in Mount Maunganui. But the next morning the people called back to say they would accept our offer but needed the money that day!! It's very difficult to withdraw a big amount in NZ on UK cards so we had to pool all our cards and try and withdraw a bit on all of them... after a great deal of stress we finally managed to scrape the money together and are now the proud owners of a cool van which Will is going to kit out. We drove the three hours to Ellie's in it and it drove like a dream, we also have all the receipts and past ownerships so I think we got a great deal in the end.

The drive through NZ was fab, it's very green a bit like driving through Devon in the summer and the sun was shining with a few whispy clouds in the sky. Sam was reading the map and we decided that all the names were hilarious and they all sound the same (I think because the Maoris only have about 15 letters in their alphabet - very confusing). Then we arrived with Ellie and Brett and had a lovely meal of fish and chips and beer (Sam had fanta!) it's great to see friends and we will spend a week here kitting out the van and getting ready for our next move, we don't know where we are going to go yet, but that's the beauty of having the van we can now just cuise wherever takes our fancy.

Blogs may be a bit less frequent at the moment as NZ doesn't offer free wi-fi like central America so I'll try and do longer ones when possible...no pic either I'm afraid as I'm on Brett's computer...lots of love to you all.