Sat 6 Apr. Taupo, NZ

We had 4 nights in New Plymouth on the way to Taupo and luckily got a great view of Mt Taranaki on the way. Our booked accomodation was awful, we stayed two nights then got our money back and moved to somewhere nicer.

It's been a while but we found another brewery in New Plymouth, as it was Easter Sunday you couldn't have a drink without having something to eat and then they add a 15% surcharge for good measure onto the bill as it's a bank holiday 🤔

Shiningpeakbrewing.com

Our luck ran out on Tuesday though when we got a flat tyre, had a couple of hours wait for the AA in a gas station, the Manager there was very helpful, gave us free coffee and let us use his mobile, our wait was interspersed with people asking us if we knew we had a flattie mate 😧

The tyre was too bad to repair so we had to swap the car over on Thursday.

All good for 3 hours until we managed to get another flattie, but this time in the middle of nowhere with no signal. International rescue came to our aid, in the form of Ralph from the New Zealand army, who stopped to help us with the spare, we slowly drove the 50k to the town we were staying to a tyre garage, this one couldn't be fixed either and he said it wasn't safe to drive the 100k to Taupo on the spare, he didn't have a new one but had a second hand one he could fit for nothing, we've been amazed with the kindness of Kiwi strangers over the past three days 😁.

We breathed a sigh of relief when we got to Taupo, our Airbnb is by the lake and we had a beautiful sunset this evening.Read more