It was sad to leave our friends in Rotorua.

Now looking forward to seeing our friends in Auckland - we have been away for many weeks and missed them very much .

The town of Tirau is famous for it's corrugated iron sculptures - quite eye-catching, judge for yourselves.

Our next stop was Hamilton where once again we stayed with a lovely family who until fairly recently were total strangers - many thanks for your kind hospitality.

In Hamilton we also met up with a member of our travel club, Silk Route Motorcaravan Network. Neil is a Yorkshire man who now lives in NZ and we had been e-mailing each other - like minds etc. It is always nice to put a face to a name.

Once the travels had been discussed, the guys got technical and were soon into engines, invertors and solar panels etc. During all this Neil mentioned that he was also a flying enthusiast and was currently building his own aeroplane. He is also the proud owner of an ex-RAF WW2 Chipmunk 2 seater plane - a hobby he likes to share. One thing led to another and before long we were offered a ride.
It not being practical on that day, we agreed to return the following Sunday morning - something to do with the thermals being better early in the morning - too technical for me but very excited about it.

Saturday, 14.2.15 was spent at the local Otara market in Auckland - like markets all over the world, a lively place.