We decided to name our van Flipper! I guess you could say we did so because of the Dolphins painted on it. Today was our first road trip and we decided to head up towards Wainui Orchards at the top of the North Island. As it turns out, a good friend of ours from home (Pete Philips) has a sister that moved out to New Zealand 5 months ago with her family. They were fed up with life in California, so they decided to pack it up and move to New Zealand. Now they are living the life growing citrus, bananas, and various fruits and veggies. Kathy made us the best home cooked meal with all the ingredients from the Orchard that were organically grown. Tomorrow we will post some more photos of the Orchard as well as the local surf spots.

Along our way to Wainui Orchards in Ahipara, we picked up two hitchhikers from Pennsylvania named Courtney and Alicia. They were also headed up to the top of the North Island. Courtney and Alicia ended up traveling with us for about 220 Kilometers. We ended up dropping them off in a field on the side of the road in Awainui where they set up their tent for the night. If you two are reading this, hope you had a good night in the rain and are safe!

As far our van journey today, that is a whole different story. For one, the radio we installed in Flipper sucks! On top of that, we were driving at about 90km per hour and water from the rain was just gushing through the door on Tony's side. On Eddie's side, it was just freezing cold wind flowing through the door. His feet and legs were numb! It was also raining all day which requires a window defroster. Did I mention that our or defroster or heater doesn't work! But that's the least of our worries. The wind was blowing so hard today that the van was all over the road. There is so much play in the steering wheel that the van would swerve about 3 feet in the lane. God bless Flipper and us. Will the journey continue in Flipper???