Saturday July 2nd, 2016 – Tarawera

We are getting really excited, only 3 days until we start our next big adventure which is taking us to Europe, a part of the world that we have never visited.

After selling the original Ruakiwi in USA in 2013, we have now bought Ruakiwi 2, a 2007 Left Hand drive motorhome which is smaller, but so well designed. Have only seen photos at this stage so as you can imagine we can’t wait to actually check her out.  

We are leaving Auckland on July 5^th on a direct flight to Heathrow with a 1hr 40 minute stop in Hong Kong. Good friends Steve and Kathy are meeting us and then taking us back to their home in Boston, about 3 hour’s drive north of London.

We met them here at the lake and somehow think they may rue the day they offered to help us with buying a motorhome in UK! We imported the van from Germany which resulted in much more paperwork than we expected, and Steve has handled it all. They have also organised for a full service and a place to store it, along with so much advice.  And will put up with us until we get our “sea legs”!

As usual we have a very vague itinerary, will take the 7 hour ferry from Harwich to Rotterdam and meander north through Netherlands, Germany and up into Scandinavia and from there, who knows which direction we will go! We are not back in NZ until mid November so plenty of time on this trip to explore. We realise this will be much more challenging than our travels through USA, with all the issues associated with different countries and their languages but hopefully we are still young enough to manage. All going well we will store it in UK and return again next year.

This morning we had the heaviest frost of the winter, probably a good time to be leaving. A couple of photos to start this year’s blog taken first thing when the mist was hanging over the lake and the frost was covering everything. Looking forward to sharing our travels – the next instalment will be from UK.

Otumutu Lagoon, Lake Tarawera on a bright but cold frosty morning.