NZ Day 1

Luckily we had a great flight over from S Korea all thanks to Korean Air, who not only treats you like real people, but they're nice about it,too. After a short sleep on the plane and some decent plane food, we landed in Auckland the morning of March 1! We were able to get a sim card for our phone and call for our van rental place, Jucy, to pick us up in just a few minutes after getting our bags. Seemed as though all was off to a good start! We got checked in for our rental and waited about an hour, since our campa van wasn't quite ready, and for the inconvenience they comped our gps, score! After we got loaded up we made a quick pit stop at the grocery to pick up some road trip essentials, and headed off for our first stop: Svord Knives. Turns out that place doesn't actually exist and we drove around some pasture land for about 30 mins before wandering into town and grabbing a small bite to eat (and a flat white as per Kathryn's instructions). Luckily we had some good food and it was still before noon, so all was not lost and we decided to head over to Hot Water Beach. The idea is that underwater hot spots heat the sands at low tide and if you dig a hole, the water that fills it is like a personal spa. So we headed over and made it to the beach about an hour before low tide, so we had time to wander about, get some ice cream, and get our beach things before digging time. Now, for those of you who don't know, Casey hates sand, spas, and manual labor that has no real purpose; so this was his version of vacation hell. Oh yes, he also hates tourists; so even better. But, being the loving husband and good sport that he is, he helped me find a little hot spot in the sand and even did most of the digging for me. Unfortunately, the water was sort of luke-warm, and not the spa-like warmth I had imagined, but it was still fun! I thought it was particularly enjoyable to sit in our warm-ish sand pool and listen to the loads of different languages people were speaking. We eventually abandoned our pool and tried to beat the crowds out of the beach area. Happily, we headed slightly north and ended up at a decent restaurant that was the replacement of something listed in our guidebook. Nothing seems to be still-around from the guidebooks or the gps. It was decently late, but seeing as we were up the coromandel peninsula, and we needed to be much further south in the morning we decided to just make a haul until about midnight and camp where we landed. This ended up working out great and we started to hit E on the gas tank right close to midnight and near a town with a suitable campground. We spent our first night in the back of our lime green mini van campa, and it slept surprisingly comfy! All in all the first day was a typical Burnette version of vacation, where barely anything goes as planned, but all is equally enjoyable. Oh yea, Casey is going to work on complimenting his mustache with a nice beard, so look forward to pictures of that along the way as well!