We may be out of our AirBnB and fully reliant on Timmy now, but still in the grips auf Auckland. Two days and one night more for Nina to finish her research at the Auckland Art Galery.
Thursday was all about getting used to our new lifestyle and putting the final touches on our setup. Buying some camping chairs, a few bits and bobs. Picking up my NZMCA membership card, so that we can take full advantage of that. We did a loop around the eastern outskirts of Auckland and gave the kids a chance to spend some time at the beach. That night, we spent the convenient but louder of Aucklands two freedom camping spots. Right at the motorway, it attracted an odd collection, but we got through the first night just fine.
On Friday, we left Nina in town for her bus to the Auckland Art Gallery. I upgraded to “stay-at-mobilehome-dad” and took the kids west all the way to Whatipu. We did a bush trail to see kauri trees and visited the black sanded Whatipu Beach. The kids had a blast, even with the 2 hours of driving over windy and even gravely roads. At mid-afternoon, we headed back to Auckland to pick up Nina and leave Auckland for good this time. It was a mildy cursed endeavour, first clipping the side mirror on a badly parked contruction truck, then stuck in traffic and finally we got a send off gift from Auckland’s finest: Turns out, the CBD has a general 30 limit, so we got a kind 120$ information at the last turn before the motorway as helpful reminder.
This night, we tried a NZMCA “Park-over-Place” for the first time. What a great thing – safe spaces organised by NZMCA members where one can spend the night for a small fee. So we enjoyed the parking lot of Woodturners Café entirely to ourselves. Much more quiet. Now, the holiday part can start …
Two car seats for the kids *check*
Getting Timmy the Motorhome out of the Mt Eden driveway…fully packed
Getting those NZ driving skills back on the road…driving on the left sure takes some getting used to
Testing our set-up with a drive to Maraetai
Another beach, another happy day for the kids
Our first night in the motorhome: Since I have to work in Auckland tomorrow, we’re “freedom camping” right next to MOTAT
I am at work so the others go exploring
Karamatura: The kids’ first experience of NZ regional parks
It’s almost proper bush
With big trees
Happy!
Look what we found!
Bumping his head at a big rata
Lookout point
A whole new world
One with palm trees
And streams though the forest
Climbing everything
A good look at everything
Fern tree
Running
A great parking spot
Great sandwiches and a non-alcoholic beer
But: Stay in the shade if possible. NZ sun will burn you.
Reading the signs
Island in the distance
Black sand beach at Whatipu
Needing more leg clearance
Kid’s footprint
Much fun was had
Look at those feet!
More beach kids
Gravel road access to the black sand beach
Having a bit of break
Kids playing
We were allowed to stay overnight at the parking area of the Woodturners cafe. It was very lovely!
There was a playground right next to our next spot for the night: Woodturners cafe
As I am lying here, in the back of Timmy the Motorhome with a view of the beach, there is no other way than feeling our trip has just now entered Chapter 1 proper. The last week could be considered prolog, but in life – everything counts, nothing is extra. So let me tell you a bit about the rest of our first week in New Zealand.
We arrived on Thursday morning, as evidenced in our first post. By Saturday, we had pretty much settled in: All paperwork done, accounts reactivated and a motorhome purchase completed. Shoutout to Hennie, who was very supportive and patient with his personal “scammer” buying a pretty expensive vehicle for the most part remotely from Germany.
Sunday was a slow day for all of us, most of all me with the obligatory plane-pest now all the way at the fever stage. Nina: The kids and I still spent some time in Kelly Tarlton’s Sea Life Center on this Sunday.
So as Monday came round, it was time to direct our focus towards this place. Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. We decided to use the day to make good on Number 3’s birthday present and took the bus to MOTAT – the Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland. He absorbed every minute of it, from opening time at 10am till the doors closed. The Agent of Entropy was less impressed but got distracted enough by some craft opportunity as part of the Auckland Anniversary Day weekend program. Her real highlight was the daring deeds to be had on the playground afterwards.
Tuesday was all preparations, getting Timmy ready for the road. It never ceases to amaze us that the unwritten NZ tradition when trading used goods seems to be that the buyer will clean. Nina: I on the other hand used the morning to get acquainted with the laudromat to do some proper washing of everything.
I was a bit high on isopropyl alcohol and glue (from fixing some sag in the headliner in the luton) when we met friends Elle and Nick in the afternoon. As perfect coincidence had it, Elle works at the Auckland Maritime Museum, so Number 3 got to see the Black Magic and America’s Cup replica first hand.
It was brilliant to catch up with old friends after 10 years. Things change, things stay the same, but everyone has a distinct memory of the covid years.
And so Wednesday came around. Nina’s first day at work and the reason (among others) why we are in New Zealand in the first place. So while she got real work done, thanks to amazing support from the Auckland Art Gallery staff, I got to play stay-at-home dad and took the little ones on a day hike up Maungawhau (Mt. Eden). The cafe up there was the perfect lunch spot. In my view, the view from the caldera beat spending over 100$ on the SkyTower any day. The Agent thought less so for all the walking up and down hill it entailed.
And so, we end our settled ways, sleep one more night at our AirB&B with Timmy ready to go tomorrow …
Even after a brief shower, the trampoline remained their favourite “toy”
A modell house as a piece of art in a park
Public transport in Auckland, easy to use with the AT Hop card!
“Get off the road….ahm tram tracks!”
The only car that wasn’t fenced off
There were different stations with things to try for kids during the school holidays. Here quilt writing
Then using letters to stamp words
A piece of slate and chalk to write on it
We love MOTAT!
Surprise ride through the ground in an EV making firefighter sounds
The AoE enjoying the ride
Making your own pattern at the quilt challenge
the most pretty pout
watching the blacksmith hammering out a few nails
cool logo, obsolete teach
Thats half of the planes in MOTATs hangar
ready for take-off
she loved the radio … it had a base station at the other end
#3 made it onto the board … quite happy
The Agent needed some hair taming
The seats flip over, so you can choose which orientation to sit in or where to from groups
the locomotive changed over to the front after every leg
our goodbye after the ride
Two adventures, daring
We took the route through the park instead of the historic tram back to the busstation
Every free second was spent here for the kids
well … needs must
perfect to kill the time
AT Metro bus – kids are a big fan of the doubledeckers
There are 10 year old pictures of us on this blog with the same building in the back
AC replica from new Zealands first victory and the winning boat Black Magic in the back
Number 3 signaling in morse
Artwork on our way to a food court with a great selection
Number 3 checking out the skilled ferry captains docking while we catch up with Nick and Elle
First shot of Timmy – 2 days in. Sign of how dazed we still are
Sunday started as Saturday had been promised to be: Very sunny. Thus, if we wanted to go and see Waiheke, this was our chance.
The view back to Auckland’s main ferry terminal
Nick drove us to the ferry terminal so we could catch the 11am ferry and off we went. The ferry ride in sunshine was supposedly quite nice…the rolling of the ferry made me tired, however, and I closed my eyes for a bit…and suddenly, we were on Waiheke.
Took the bus into town and walked along the beach and across rocks until we hit Little Oneroa Bay, where we had lunch. This is also the narrowest part of the island so we crossed over to the other side and then walked part of the walking track Te Ara Hura which leads around the island.
The whole track is not doable in a day so we walked from Blackpool to Te Wharau Bay, took the shortcut over the hill to Cable Bay and then continued along the west coast until we were back at the ferry terminal.
The look back over Oneroa (the town)
It was a great day for walking with all the sunshine and we saw many birds, a couple of horses, including a pony that really wanted to get rid of its saddle and even an ent. The ent was trying to run from the ocean but was ultimately defeated.
The west coast has some spectacular views onto the skyline of Auckland which is probably why there are estates and mansion with helicopter landing sites dotting along the coast.
Close to the ferry terminal, the sun started to set so, again, we got some beautiful sunset shots. After those, I hurried towards the terminal as I didn’t want to miss the 6pm ferry.
The ferry ride back gave us a view onto Auckland, first in fading sunlight and then in the dark with all the city lights greeting us. I think, it was the best time to come back. 🙂
RoRo freight ships in Auckland harbour
Auckland Skyline
Three shells Flo found
Rock formations between litte and Oneroa Beach
Trapped in a pond by the tide.
The view back
Our lunch spot – Dragonfired nom
Only the second couple we saw in NZ
picturesque shipwreck
The track leads across some pastures
She was keen to see what we were up to.
Some great views on the western side.
poor ent, he did not make it …
From here, we took a shortcut across to Cable Bay.
The villa sits below … one got to have standards …
The evening light made for a great walk back up the west coast
West coast of Waiheke
From here, we could already see the ferry port below
Behind Nina is the track we took.
A Pōhutukawa tree leaning from the cliff towards the sea
Matiatia harbour is where the passenger ferries land.
This will be a very brief one with a couple of pictures. Our plan to go to Waiheke island was abandoned after the weather (and the forecast) changed on us just this morning. Instead, we decided to go to the Zoo a bit later, after we saw our friend Mash one more time as he was passing through around noon.
Auckland Zoo is nice, but nothing out of the ordinary. We were sometime not 100% sure about the well-being of some of the animals, but the staff and setup inspired enough confidence that they care and do their best.
I really enjoyed the NZ sections of the Zoo as well. The enclosures are set up so that one gets a good look at Kereru, Kaka, Kea & co.
Love the colouring
Australian …
Can you see it scheming for world domination?
Animal of doom
Surprisingly cool animals.
Cool, but nothing beats Nina’s close encounter.
Flamingos, properly dyed
Did not look too happy. Maybe we should have thrown in some of the more annoying kids for entertainment.
This … really, there was no other way?
Sneaky flying mountain ninja.
Ahh … we will miss the Tui’s call …
Have not seen them before
I actually like them since we had a tour at Zeelandia
Who, me?
Natural habitat – a run down Florida shack
“I want that … seeeed …”
Social hierarchy games
A prehensile tail helps with hanging around on tree stumps.
We decided to hit the cinema to finally watch “Inside Out” which we had missed out on in Wellington. I loved it. Such a good and sad movie.
During our wait for the movie to start, Flo discovered the arcade of the movie theatre and although we didn’t waste any cash, we did wander around for a while.
After the film, we had lunch at a lovely cafe and realized that we had not taken the camera into town so there are almost no pictures. Which is a shame because after lunch, we had ice cream at Giapo. They do haute ice cream in home-made flavours and use decorations on the cone as well. I had two scoops (chocolate and afghan cookie) which was then dipped in white chocolate and had cornflakes sticking to it as well as a whole afghan cookie. It was amazing but also way too much. Flo also struggled with his two scoops so at the end, we both had to admit defeat after 85% of the whole thing.
We also continue to work on preparations for Australia. Since we have quite some time in Melbourne while waiting on the bike to arrive, we now successfully lined up a new rear tire as well as most of the touratech gear. We also exchanged some money already.
In the evening, our friends had a lovely combined dinner and then a round of “Lords of Waterdeep”. It is a fun boardgame and not nearly as complicated as all the parts make it look like. I think Flo will purchase it when we have a home again. 🙂
When we started our trip, and this blog back up in earnest, the expectation was that we would write maybe two to three posts a week. Without really pushing for it, we now got a post for every single day of New Zealand, each of them with at least some pictures.
The surface works anywhere, this is me writing this post
On average, it takes about an hour every day to write this blog. The process is already sinking in as part of our routine. One of us writes the body of the post itself, so far between 150 and 550 words each. Then we copy the pictures of the day onto the external hard drive, have a quick browse and pick images matching the post. Once we have a place with internet access we copy, resize and upload. Then, Flo gives every picture a title and description and 2-3 go into the post and the rest goes into a gallery. All in all about 1 hr.
The end result has been read by a growing number of people, over 100 by now. Cool – and also mildly scary.
By now, I think we both agree that we like the setup. We keep everyone informed, there is a record for ourselves and we get some great feedback (mostly on facebook, so feel free to use the comment function some more!). So we have all intentions to keep the 1 post per day up for travel days.
very hip, the surface is right at home
Now, whether that is actually achievable in places with less than North Island level of connectivity remains to be seen, but we will try.
You may have noticed that I said travel days. Right now, we are calming down a bit, so until we leave for Melbourne on the 25th, there may actually be some gaps on slow days, or posts more about more general things like this one.
Now, we did do some things today. We failed several attempts at buying a sleeping bag, survived a bus trip across town without a modern smart phone and had a lovely lunch at Federal & Wolfe.
The day started with a lovely Nutella toast and tea breakfast before we got into our “getting things done” mode. Ruth and Damien were amazing hosts, driving me around Auckland to pick up our camping gear from Linda and Denis who were kind enough to take it down to Auckland from Cape Reinga.
Flo took the bike, bought a big army bag so we could properly store our gear in the crate and then drove to the airport where Rocinante had a date to be crated. We met up again at the airport (Ruth and Damien were still driving me around) and cleaned all our gear for the biosecurity check in Australia. The tent gave us the most work; especially the footprint had seen some wet and muddy conditions in the last two weeks.
But we finished cleaning, packed the bags for the crate and the bag for staying in Auckland and got driven to Nick’s, Sophie’s and Dan’s place where we can stay for the next little while.
Thank you so much, Ruth and Damien, for everything you did. We hope to repay you some day in Frankfurt for your kindness. 🙂
We are mildly ashamed for going to Burgerfuel over more foodhipster place
Entering Nick’s place, we suddenly became tourists in a city again. The bike was not available as a mode of transport, most of our biking cloths stayed with the crate as well. Instead, we met Mash, a good friend, on his holiday back home in NZ and went to Kelly Tarlton’s which is an underwater and arctic animals place. Given how long the way to the counter was they must usually have quite the crowd coming in but we had almost no one in front of us. There were line of penguin foot marks outside, showing the way, but they were quite far apart as well. Flo managed a jump from one set of prints to the next and was declared part penguin because of it. 🙂
Interesting talk during the feed
We rushed to the stingray enclosure to be there for the feeding and the talk. Stingrays are surprisingly cool and big. Of course, we also looked at the penguins and sharks. A rotating tube was the thing that tickled our fancy the most: It screws so much with your head that you cannot walk straight through it. Everyone wobbled through as if drunk which was hilarious.
Afterwards, Nick took us to Milse which is exactly my kind of place. They have so many awesome sweet things there! We were too early for the dinner menu (which apparently is also just desserts) but I still found so much to try!
To round up the evening, we ordered pizza and watched a movie.
This time the forecast held true. Mostly, that is. We got to ride back the lovely gravel road from far north of the Coromandel in sunshine, that was true. The predicted temperature was slightly off, though: instead of the promised +2 degrees, the frost on our tent and bike indicated it was more towards -2.
We took our time going back, taking ample of photos missed yesterday due to rain or the setting sun. I got my mandatory fording action shot 🙂 Speaking of fords: two local Kiwi bikers on V-Stroms were mighty impressed with my report of “nah, they were not deep, maybe 20 cm” …
The last breather for sanity was once again the Driving Creek Cafe. This time fully in sunshine, no ifs or buts. They even had the fire going … ahhh.
The rest of the day was taken up by a 200 km push to get north past Auckland and a lot of weird people along the way and on the campground. Does Auckland attract crazy?
We had the beach all to ourselves. Reward for braving the cold
It looks warm, but the sun lies (a bit) – maybe 5 degrees
The bay seen from the road back.
The gravel road goes up and down, but mostly hugging the coastline closely.
Completely staged action shot. The night before, I just rode through 2 up.
Pohutekawa tree at Fantail Bay. The road was lined with them.
Last view back from our lunch spot.
Another way to deal with ever lawn turning into a swamp in winter: Artificial turf!
This is where we came from today.
Camping at Orewa Beach Top 10 Holiday Park, right at the beach
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