Auckland, Thomas and the end of Kea Kauri

From Piha we drove to visit Thomas, a German in the fourties who we met at our first track in NZ. Back then he told us he was living in Auckland and invited us to come for a coffee or something.

He lives in Torbay, a suburb near the beach. He has been here already for 20 years, and he bought the house were he lives 11 years ago. It is a very nice one, 160 sq meters big and 10 min walk from the beach. Pretty cool place considering that is 20 min from the center of Auckland.

We went for a walk and crossed 3-4 beaches and little cliffs. Later he invited us for selfmade pizza and because it turned late, we slept also in his place.

Next day we drove to Takapuna, a well know surfing beach closer to town, and we stayed in the camping there. That point would be were we sold our van to a couple from Catalunya.

Jordi and Lydia drove all the way from Christchurch just to see our van. The same morning a Guy from Canada (Kostya) wanted to have it already!

After some negotiations they decided they wanted it, but not without having a weird discussion. They thought the van was going for 2300$ but it was actually 2300€. I knew, units are everything :)

Anyway, after visiting Devonport and mount Victoria, from which you can see Auckland from a very nice far bird view, we sold the van. Exactly for the same amount as we paid for it! That was cool.

Later, when we got to Auckland city (already homeless), we found out that some other travellers are struggling to get rid of their car/vans. Now is low season (winter), so the demand is pretty low. We were lucky (or smart), that our van was rather special. There are very few of them being 4WD,diesel, long wheel base and having not over 300 thousand km.

So, now we are sitting in the terrace of our hostel, and hoping that tomorrow won't rain, because then we could catch a ferry and do a all-day walking in the Rangitoto island. A only 600 years old volcanic island 20 minutes boat away from Auckland's harbour.

We are already looking forward for Fiji (Wednesday)...there we go!

Cheers,

Juanma.

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Back to Warkworth

We drove back to the Sandspit Camping, since we liked it very much the last time, and we could use the gaming room if the weather was not doing good. In fact, we played again a lot of pingpong, and saw the English Chronics of Narnia in the cinema room.

We stayed there two days, from which one of them, it bucketed down nonstop. But the next morning we were woken up by the sun rising out of the Pacific ocean and the paradise-like singing of the Tuis. We went for a walk to Mullet Point, in our 'tennis' shoes, since we thought a walk on grass should be easy. Wronnng! It was muddy as I never saw before, and our shoes were soon to be seen only brown. Happy us...

In Martins bay, we took a picture of that car on the beach. That easy you can bring your kayak to the sand, not bad eh?

Later we drive to Henk and Jeanette, they invited us to stay a couple of days at their home. It was Friday so we could spend some time together in the weekend. Their grandson Luca was also with them, he is only five years old but was really funny.

Saturday we went to the market at Matakana, really small but nice, and full of young people. Later we went for a walk to Tawaranui, again a "predator-proff" fenced peninsula, in which plenty of native fauna can live without the threat of introduced predators. The park has a 2.5 km long fence, and the two beaches are a surfers paradise, as well as having nice native bush walks. Lovely!

Later we ate some pie in a pottery cafe, and headed back home. At night we cooked a powerful tortilla de patatas to refuel.

Sunday was gonna be a clean and tidy up day, it was still sunny and we had to prepare and repack our accumulated stuff and clean the car. That took us the whole day. In the evening Henk coocked a really tasteful dinner and we played Rummykub and laughed with the stories that the couple were sharing with us. Was Fun!

Monday we drove to Piha beach, in the Waitakere Ranges. A nice surfing beach with a huge rock between both beaches, Lion's rock. A sacred Maōri place.

Plenty of the big starfish there, I went too close to take a picture, and the result was having to change my trousers, shoes and socks. The waves were massive.

The blue car in the picture is a very common car type in New Zealand. It is something between a pickup and an sports car. They call them Utes, and are, according to me, pretty ugly. Massive 5 liter V8 engines, what a waste of petrol.

On the way down we drove through the motorway, what a shock. We are not used to masses... coming back to Europe will be hard...

That was our last, out of the city experience in NZ.

Later more to come!

Cheers!

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relaxing and waiting for the sun to come....

We slept in Rarawa beach, in a DoC camping ground and the next day we drove down to Cable bay. Suddenly the weather was almost perfect and we took our camping chairs and colonized the beach for several ours. Daniela wrote tagebuch and I blogged until my battery was gone.

Later we drove further south looking for a camping to stay overnight. In the south island you can virtually stay almost everywhere, but this time in the north island we were told that it was not safe to do so, so we slept only in "authorized" places where you are normally never alone. We slept in Kerikeri, and played again pingpong to fight against the coldness, works pretty good!

Next day the weather was still lovely and we drove to Pahia, in the Bay of Islands. Finally we were again wearing swimming shorts!

I bought an Autocar magazine and read it all, with some nostalgia the article about the Ferrari FF. The "Adenauer" series production that we were working for in GETRAG.

We visited the famous public toilets from Kawakawa, designed by the Austrian artist Hundertwasser. Some pictures in the previous post...

Sometimes these things show how easy it is to make common things look nice or even art pieces.

Cheers!

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Whananaki and Uretiki

After a bit more driving, we endedu up in the DoC camp ground from Whananaki, right on a beautiful beach. We liked it so we stayed two nights there.

We saw how our neighbours went fishing with a Kajak, and surprisingly for us, gave us some fresh snapper fish for dinner! Mmm

Kiwis (the people) love to do things related with the sea. A lot of them have boats and almost all drive Pickups. We observed an ingenious way of fishing: with a long line being taken in deep sea just with a Kajak. Layer we heard they even send the fishing line to the sea with help of a Kite! Still waiting to see this...

We used again our tarp, which I think we have used it not a single time for the reason that we bought it for(shade).

In between, we drove by Whangarei to buy some food and later we drove to Uretiki, another DoC camp ground. There we saw again another Possum, this time a fat one. ahhh, are they ugly...

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ahipara... blokart!

Hi again, after some driving my mobile has some more battery to write even more...

From Trounson we drove to Ahipara, where the 90 miles beach starts. Guess why this beach is called like this?

I wanted to drive on that beach with our van, but some locals told us it wasn't a good idea because of the late rain and some quick sand areas. So we rented a quad an drove on it and around the dunes. But the coolest was that the guy from who we rented the quads had also blokarts to rent, and in such a long beach that is a lot of fun.

It is a pity that my grandfather does not live any longer, he would have loved this invention...

Anyway, after the fun, the man told us that if we had allwheeldrive it shouldn't be a problem to drive on the beach with the van, so... we did.

That was adrenalin, because you can drive on the beach with low tide, in high tide the sea comes almost to the dunes. That means if you get stucked and your mobile does not work, you can not get help and the car just sinks on the sand and under water...

But nothing happened, after driving more than 40 km we had enough and we took an 'exit' to a small town. That was cooool!

Salut!

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Waitomo caves and the hobbits

Hi folks,

Going north (in search of warm), we visited the world know Waitomo Caves. Limestone formations which are amazing nature spectacles. There are three cave systems but we saw only the glowworm cave and the long one. You walk for about 1:45 inside the earth, seing some glowworms and hearing a subterranean river which flows inside the cave. It even has a small waterfall that is very load when being inside. Some meters you have to walk them in completely pitch dark black. You see absolutely nothing and it is not allowed to lit anything because it disturbs the glowworms. Pictures were done all with the camera, so none this time. The glowworm cave har probably thousands of them, looking up was like seeing stars in a clear night. Very nice and romantic,since you see them while on a boat and in the most absolute silence. Something similar to "las cuevas del drac" en Mallorca o "Les coves de Sant Joan" de Vall d'uxo.

In the night that we spend in Waitomo we heard our first Kiwi bird, pretty load! We even took our lamos and went for a walk in the dark forest, withouht luck. Seems that to see a Kiwi in the wild is pretty dificult!

Next day, with a lot of rain, we drove again north towards Auckland, but we deviated a bit east and had a wonderful look at the hobbiton movie set of yhe Lord of the Rings. Really cool what we saw there, but they made us sign some papers that we could not say anything to anyone and we were also of course not allowed to post pics on the net. So wait for us to come...

Because the land were the hobbits 'lived' was a sheep farm, in the price if the ticket there was included a sheep shed show. Also not bad to see how, just a man, shed the whool of the whole sheep in less than 2 minutes... Curiosity: the world record hold of sheep shedding in one day is 800 !!

Count them all and for sure you get asleep!

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Pics from Wellington

Just near a McDonalds with free wifi, so I thought I could upload several pics now, but I think they have blocked picasa, and thats were the photos for the blog are hosted...so I have to use GSM data...grrr

The pics are from a -the way they call it- predator free sanctuary. Some years ago volunteers near Wellington started a project which consisted closing 1square mile of forest near the capital, using an advanced fence. Such a fence is able to stop most of the introduced predators to the New Zealand native birdlife. It is tall enough that no cats can jump over it, and so dense that rats, rabbits, possum and stoats can not enter it.

Inside you can have a better idea of how New Zealand looked (and sounded) before humans arrived. There are so many birds! We saw Tui, bellbirds, kaka, saddleback (picture),takahe(picture), hihi and even a Tuatara. They have some kiwi birds too, but since they are nocturnal we saw none. Weta, which is something like a giant grasshopper, was also to be seen.

Well, I have to catch up with two delayed weeks of blog. So I better hurry up and comment only on the nicest!

Cheers!

Jm

Cheers

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