Today we had the first setback in our journey. We awoke to find one of the front side windows of the campervan smashed. Marja' s backpack and raincoat that had been in the front were stolen. We had all heard a loud noise in the middle of the night and felt the campervan moving but as we were in deep sleep when it happened we hadn't realised what had actually happened and we had just slept on. Fortunately all the important things such as money, passports etc had been in the back, as well as Nathalie's and my backpack. So in stead of having a relaxed breakfast as we had planned, we had to call the police and the rental company to try and have our window fixed. Unfortunately it was a Sunday, and furthermore the Sunday in the long weekend, as the next day, the 6th of June, is a public holiday in New Zealand and Australia, as they then celebrate the birthday of Queen Elisabeth. After about 1,5 hour a carglass repair van arrived and the man asked us to follow him to his workplace on the other side of Rotorua. According to the glass repair man a lot of smashed windows had occured in Rotorua since a certain family had moved back into town... He put in a temporary plastic window so we could drive on. We had a quick look around in Rotorua, did some shoppings and decided to leave Rotorua as soon as possible as we all got quite sick of the sulphur smell.
From Rotorua we drove to the Coromandel Penisula. On the way to Hot Water Beach our next stop for the night, we stopped in Whangamata, to get Marja a new raincoat and to have a look at the beautiful beach there. When it was dark (it gets dark around 17.15 here) we arrived at the holiday park in Hot Water Beach.
Wat een avonturen zeg. Ben je aan de andere kant van de wereld en gebeurt hetzelfde als in Nederland met een ingeslagen ruit en ook weer net op zondag. Ik hoop dat jullie een beetje van schrik bekomen zijn. Snel naar Hawaï zou ik zeggen.
SvarSlett