accessible by boat, so we decided on Cowshed Bay on the Kenepuru Sound. It was a small site right on the water’s edge, and the weather was fine, if a little windy!! We didn’t waste any time in exploring the local area. There was a local hostel which as the only building around there served as shop, boat hire, petrol station, take away, restaurant and pub!! We were quite surprised to see that you could rent a small boat with an equally small outboard motor for only £20 for half a day, and after chatting with the lady in the shop, we decided to see what the weather was like the next day and maybe take to the water. Darkness was falling, and it was getting just a little chillier, so we decided to give the pub a go. Considering the remoteness of the location the beer wasn’t badly priced, and the pool table was both cheap and good, so a pleasant hour was passed before it was time to return to Bongo for tea!!

Back in the North Island we’d bought an inverter box which plugs into a cigar lighter and has a mains socket. It nicely solved the problem of not having power to charge the camera and laptop. We knew that the laptop charger took quite a bit of juice, so only used that when the van was running, but for the rest of our stuff, we figured it would be fine when it wasn’t. In any case, the thing had an alarm which was supposed to sound when the van’s battery was running out, but before it was too flat that the van wouldn’t start. It must be said that it had come in very handy so far, but whilst charging that night, the alarm on it went off, so we duly unplugged it, and thought it would be fine. Hmmmm, not so, we woke up in the morning to a completely flat battery, in the middle of nowhere with not another soul around!! Great! It seemed we’d made two mistakes. Firstly we’d forgotten to unplug our fridge, and secondly when the alarm had gone off, we should have started the engine straight away,