A new adventure in New Zealand

We spent a couple of days in Bangkok, one of which we spent sorting out our various bits of camping, hiking and kayaking kit that we’d brought and making sure they were clean and dry before their trip through New Zealand customs (and biosecurity screening!). We rewarded ourselves for this hard work with a trip to the cinema in Bangkok (in English, with Thai subtitles) to see the new Star Wars film, on release date! Something we’d never have been organised enough to do back home. The second day was spent being tourists around the city, visiting the palace and Wat Phra. Wat Phra is a temple which is famous for a giant (and I mean HUGE) reclining buddha statue, as well as quite a few other impressive sights.

On our final morning in Asia, we treated ourselves to a slow start, hotel breakfast and swim in the pool, and started our journey to New Zealand. We were due to fly from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur, then on a connecting flight on to Auckland. Unfortunately, our first flight was delayed and we were anxiously clock-watching as it got later and later. It looked very much like we weren’t going to make the connection. There’s not much you can do in this situation, and so we resigned ourselves to whatever the airline had in store for us. We arrived about 5 minutes after the connecting flight was due to take off, and were greeted by a member of airline staff at the exit of the aircraft with a ‘Auckland’ sign. He handed us some boarding passes for a flight to Sydney, and they had arranged for us to pick up boarding passes for a flight to Auckland from there. We would arrive into Auckland about 6 hours later than planned, but at least we’d get there!

Arriving into Auckland without further hassle, we queued to pick up our bags….however they did not arrive, and thus we entered another queue for baggage services to report them missing. Sigh. This was going to be a long process.

However, the staff at Auckland airport were really helpful, assigning a case reference and providing us with all the information we needed about the ‘mishandled baggage’ process. We made our customs declarations (lots of kayaking gear, hiking and camping gear to declare) and watched as the lady circled the “FULL INSPECTION” field on the form. We were quite glad we didn’t have to wait while our bags were fully inspected and that we would already be enjoying New Zealand when they arrived!

We picked up our camper van the following morning, and after a quick stop at a shopping centre to buy some clean clothes (damn you missing bags!) we drove out of Auckland heading for Tairua on the Coromandel Peninsula. Within a few miles we were climbing up a mountain pass and being treated to some lovely scenery. This was what we were here for!

We spent a few great days up and down the Eastern coast of the Coromandel Peninsula. My sister Hannah and her husband George flew over from their home in Brisbane and we had fun hiring surf boards at Hot Water Beach, kayaking to Cathedral cove, and generally enjoying the hot weather and beach lifestyle. We had to cook for the first time in roughly 2 months too (eating out in Asia is incredibly cheap), though I quite enjoyed the challenge of preparing tasty meals on two small gas hobs which our camper provided.

On our third day in the Coromandel (and the day before we were due to leave), the online baggage tracker announced that our bags were delivered (to the campsite we had stayed at on the first night) and we were able to drop in on them to collect them and reunite us with clean clothes, waterproof jackets, towels, and all manner of other things that we had been missing! We were now fully equipped to start what felt like a holiday from our previous holiday. Travelling is a hard life!!!