Koutu - Port Albert

We woke up to the wind rocking the van from side to side but the views when we opened the curtains were pretty incredible. Again we were only a stones throw from the water.

Unfortunately the sink still hadn't drained away overnight so breakfast was a ham sandwich rather than our usual porridge, coffee and yogurt. We parked on a bit of an angle so decided to pack up the bed, wash the dishes from the night before in a bucket and head back to the dump station we visited last night to try and get the sink fixed. After no success and the rental company recommending household unblocker we decided to shower and get changed in the van on the side of the road before heading out in search of a supermarket.

En route to the super market we drove through Waipoua Forrest. We had planned to go for a nice long walk to see some Kauri trees but the weather wasn't the best today and we were still in crisis mode with the sink! Instead we opted for a two minute walk to see THE biggest and also thought to be the oldest Kauri tree Tane Mahuta. Said to be over 2000 years old it was literally the biggest tree we had ever seen!

The Kauri trees in New Zealand have unfortunately contracted a disease meaning they're all slowly dying. This is thought to have been spread by dirt on people's shoes and the shallow roots the trees have picking up a bacteria so we had to scrub our shoes on the way in and out of the Forest including a squirt with disinfectant. The track is also a platform which is a foot or two off the ground.

We popped to the information centre and coffee shop to see if there were any other short walks we could do but a Devonshire cream team and latte got the vote. Blake was mortified to discover that the 'Devon tea' as it was advertised didn't come with clotted cream but instead squirty cream!

We then headed to our next overnight spot taking a quick pit stop at a Countdown to buy some sink and plughole unblocker. 15 minutes later whilst we ate lunch in the car park (I love driving our house around) and half a bottle of the unblocker showed little sign of fixing our problem so I headed back in to see if they had a plunger. About 10 minutes of funny noises, poisonous liquid squirting towards my face and maybe some effing and jeffing the sink finally decided to empty. We ran some more liquid and water through just to be sure and headed to the nearest dump station to empty it all out.

Luckily our campsite was just around the corner so we pulled up and wrote all the blogs (including this one) as our fans have been complaining of little activity including the odd question of 'are you still alive?'

We also spotted a McDonalds around the corner so we're off to upload all our our posts and a cheeky Big Mac :)Read more