We arrived in Auckland on Wednesday noon with the sun shining bright. However, that changed as soon as we got our campervan and got on our way on Friday. It was raining more or less the whole weekend. We had planned hiking and walking on beaches for the weekend. We got a lot of drinking tea and watching episodes of Stargate SG 1 in our van, waiting for the rain to stop. Or at least get lesser. We did get a small window of dry weather on saturday to walk down to Cathedral Cove, a big hole in a rock on a nice beach. The walk took 90 minutes and we had just gotten back to our van when it started pouring again.

So we drove off south, hoping to get better weather. Next destination Matamata, gateway to the Shire of Hobbition, where Frodo and his companions started their journey…