Campervan Update #2

Here is a breakdown of our last few days. We spent 3 nights in the Cozy Cottage RV Park (yes that's the name and it feels like we are in the Disney movie CARS), where we paid just about $20 to stay the night in the park. This is a nice park as it has showers, grills, a ping pong table, bathrooms, fresh water, power, and a dump site. We can camp in many places for free but then we don't have these amenities. Without power we can't charge anything but our phones, and with needing to dump our gray water and waste, as well as refill our clean water, we figure every third night or so we will spend the night in such a place (however sometimes we can stretch longer if we are able to find free dump and refill sites along our trail). But don't worry, we are still highly intrigued by the unique locations and people at the freedom camp sites!

We have spent a couple of days in Rotorua, a geothermal wonderland and tourist haven with tons of unique activities. It's hard to pick what to do as the choices are endless and expensive, but we are happy with the balance of activity, family time, fun and learning we've had here.

We took one day and drove about 45 minutes to Tokora where a Waratah Factory exists. Waratah is a company owned by John Deere that dad's brother manages sales and marketing for. They make these really cool attachments which loggers use to chop and farm huge trees. The attachments cost about $250,000 each and what they can do is quite impressive (search YouTube if interested). We received a breakdown of their business and overview of their manufacturing, along with a quick tour of the shop floor. We certainly appreciated the time and effort put forth by Uncle Dan and John to make this happen for us.

Waratah Attachment

Inventory of "raw frames" at Waratah

On our drive back to Rotorua we took a hike though the amazing Redwoods Whakarewarewa Forest, where about a hundred miles of walking and mountain bike trails exist. This was absolutely beautiful and a great opportunity to stretch our legs.

Beautiful forest!

We love Redwoods!

The next day we elected to spend the morning having the boys do a canopying and zip line tour where they also learned about the forest and its critters.  They had a great experience and came back talking about ferns and trapping opossums and other pests that are not native to New Zealand and wrecking havoc bird life.  In the afternoon the boys rolled down the hill in Zorb balls.  They enjoyed this and compared it to going down a water slide.  We returned to the Whakarewarewa Forest to catch a few of the last bikers come through the finish line at the big bike race that day.  Then we traveled to a free campsite about half an hour away that was on a lake with a path around it.  We spent the night here as it was free and closer to our first destination the next morning.

Some canopy showboating

Canopying

The post-Zorb jump!

Reading at our campsite by the lake

We woke and headed to the Lady Knox geyser and Wai-O-Tapu park.  This was the first geyser we'd seen and it, along with the incredibly colorful pools of water and bubbly mud, made for a unique place to hike around.  Wai-O-Tapu is an amazing natural park with colors that your eyes hardly believe. This is due to the extremely hot water, with readings as high as 300 degrees C, melting minerals in the rocks and then releasing them via steam. This makes various vibrant colors all over the place depending on what mineral is being released. Some of the bushes even look like they have been spray painted because of the minerals that are in the air.

Lady Knox Geyser

Mom & kids in front of the "Artist Palette"

Dad & kids in front of "Devil's Bath"

Afterwards, we headed back to the Whakarewarewa Forest for some mountain biking. The boys favorite activity over these last few days has been the mountain biking.  They have missed riding bikes and believe this is something they want to get into more when we return home.

Biking at last!

An excellent afternoon

We left Rotorua and headed south to Lake Taupo where we freedom camped along the lake for the evening.  Dad was the first to use the campervan shower, which despite being more or less on the toilet isn't too bad, and we opted for our first meal in a restaurant since plunging into this experience. We've been enjoying some simple meals that we were used to at home as we try to save money so we can do the activities here.  This was our 6th night sleeping in the camper and we are all suprised at how well it is going overall. The biggest challenge is getting four kids asleep in such very tight space.

We appreciate our reader's faithfulness and enthusiasm for staying connected via our travels.  It's a challenge to stay connected as much as we'd like while living this campervan lifestyle. Our electronics get drained and if we don't have access to plug them in, priority goes to mom and dad's phones for driving directions. We very rarely have wifi and are burning through our data plan as we research future stops, not to mention there's very little time for parents to be on screens in this small space where little people have constant needs and keeping the peace is priority.

One of the biggest priorities these last few weeks has been to plan and research future destinations. We have to first figure out what we want to do and then email places, wait to hear back, while dealing with getting visas (for certain countries), plane tickets, places to stay, etc. All of this while we don't have the luxury of constant Internet or wifi as we are accustomed to.  It can be time consuming, all while finding the balance of learning about where we are and enjoying the present. Not to mention that campervan living and lack of Internet/wifi has made getting much school done a bit complicated.  One humorous aspect of the kids not being "connected" is that as we drive around, they covet passing Burger King's as they can leech free wifi for about 2 minutes, assuming their devices are charged!

All in all, we have made great progress with our future plans while here in NZ where the cell signals are fast and data is reasonably priced (unlike South America). Mom has been amazingly organized and bearing the brunt of the creative effort so far, while Dad is the logistic guy.  So, those of you who were taking bets as to how long this crazy adventure would last, we have some news!  Some of the connections have fallen in place almost seamlessly, and that is the confirmation that we have been praying for to know how to proceed with our trip.  We have our accommodations booked while in northern Australia, and have fleshed out some details for our time in SE Asia.  Then we will fly to South Africa and Swaziland to help with River Valley and Children's Cup before flying up to Cairo and the middle east. All this while we don't know what we are doing next week! You can see the updated plans on our Itinerary page, if interested, as we keep this up to date as plans are made.