Auckland Trips!

Praying Mantis in our garden - a little baby - bless!
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Raglan

We set off to check out the famous break for the weekend with Karen & Aidan and Danny & Ellie on campervan mission! Drove down and it was such a beautiful sunny day! We all met up at the campsite and booked our spots then headed off to check out the famous break. We got there to find it was working and it was small and clean so hopped in to have a great surf on a fun little wave. Also just nice to chill out on the beach in the sun! After that we all went for a wander into the town to stock up on beers and BBQ food and had a lovely chilled out evening chatting away til the embers of the BBQ went cold!

my first fresh free range oyster!

Walking in the wilds in Kohi
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On Sunday we headed straight to the beach and spend the morning surfing (no wetsuits needed the water is so warm here!) and I also managed to get sunburnt – even though I’d used factor 30! Finally we had to face reality and head back up to Auckland and work – Boo!!!

The move

After living in Kohimarama at the shared house with Yvette and Sam and with only a month or so left of our stay in Auckland, Yvette dropped the bombshell that she was moving out. This wouldn’t normally have been such a bad thing however she was the lead tenant, meaning that if she moves out the tenancy to the property goes back to the letting agent and we all get kicked out!!!!! This didn’t leave us with a great deal of time as Sam wasn’t going to inherit the tenancy and would have had to chase it, which was never going to happen, so the hunt for somewhere to stay for about 4 weeks arose. We were beginning to think that we were never going to find anyone to take in two homeless pommes when we found an add that sounded hopeful. We shot across town over to the north shore, to an area called Glenfield and met with Kris and Andrea, within about two seconds of speaking with them we knew that we had found our home! So without hesitation we gladly and probably not soon enough moved out of the old house! I won’t drag you into the ridiculous situation and further dealings over bills and bonds but needless to say the lead tenant is off our xmas card list!!!!!

Auckland
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Goat Island and Pakiri

Another weekend escape plan was hatched and off we headed up the coast where we stopped at Orewa, a small but consistent break, we took out one board and so that we could continue with the miracle of getting Mad stood up on a surfboard, which is exactly what happened! With a little push she was off even heading across the wave! Excellent!!! The flip side was that during one of the pushes my fingers got caught in her leash and almost pulled my fingers off! I had to howl into a wave, I’m pretty sure a whale had to breach from the water as a result of my cry! My index finger swelled up like a little purple sausage and hurt like hell! Pretty sure I broke the thing as it’s still got a weird lump now oops! But I couldn’t let that spoil my day so I hopped on Mad’s board, paddled out to the back and caught a nice little wave to finish the session! We headed up to a campsite in Pakiri where we were going to stay for two nights. When they told us the prices of $40 per night for an unpowered site, it reduced to one night! After getting our heart rates under control we chilled out and enjoyed a cold beer!

Auckland by night!
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The next day we braved a massive dirt track hill to check out Goat Island – a great marine reserve and brilliant snorkelling so we’d heard – sadly it was not our day as there was swell and the water was all cloudy from a storm out to sea. After giving it a quick go we gave up and headed off down the coast back to Orewa, where we knew we would have surf! Mad sat on the beach and chilled while I caught about five hours worth of waves!

Waiheke Island

Waitangi day a public holiday! Off we went with our fab new flatmates on the ferry from Devonport (much nicer than the Devonport you are thinking of!) to Waiheke island off of the coast of Auckland. We passed other green coloured islands and enjoyed the scenery. We arrived at the ferry port with the hope of nabbing a hire car but no joy the whole fleet of about nine had gone! So we headed to the bus queue when a strange chap came up to us pimping himself as an ex-PE teacher with a minibus and would gladly do whatever we wanted in relation to touring the island of course. So we bit the bullet and agreed to go with him. We got to his minibus, so far so good, then noticed it sagging at the rear slightly, we got in to find that it was full of rather large brits! Oh no! We set off and had to listen to what I would call a classic brit, so posh in his speech and feeling the need to express himself to the point of shouting every syllable. I was about ready to strangle him after hearing the fifth or so daft question about drainage from the residents properties, when we stopped at a great view of some of the beaches that the island had to offer. We hoped out and snapped a couple of pictures and found that the larger two of the group were still in the process of getting out as we were all getting back in, not a picture of health. We set off again and soon stopped in the town centre to grab some fish and chips, best in the area, so we had heard. We looked at the menu for the takeaway meals and ordered our food, expecting the total to run somewhere near to $15, the woman behind the counter calculated it to come to somewhere in the region of $40+!!!!!!! Yes ladies and gents, you are thinking about the takeaway as being deep fried fish in batter wrapped in paper! So understandably we questioned this amount. The woman behind the counter, now I want to be kind as apparently she is over worked, can only be described as a HAG or some form of Witch of the south (she was rude to Mad). Firstly let me build the scene so you can get an idea what we were dealing with. You enter the shop and approach the counter after having a quick look at the menu board and see a woman behind the counter, we utter the conversation of “Hi, we heard you do the best fish and chips in the area!” to be met with “Best in the world!” stern face, we laughed, sterner face. So we went on to choose the fish on offer then she weighed it and rang it into the till, as stated we were hit with a slight financial shock and questioned the cost, as there may have been a mistake, perhaps she rang it through 4 extra times or so!!!! She then with a face like thunder went off to check her calculations and weighed the fish again, “You’ve got about $30 worth of fish there”, it did look nice. “Could we have a smaller pieces?” as Andrea and Kris’s had come to a reasonable amount. “No I don’t think there are any smaller pieces”, having a half interested look. “Why is it so much?” the answer basically came back as it was fresh fish, not just fish as stated on the menu and there was a surcharge on every order made by a tourist as it was a public holiday. So in light of this little gem “In that case can we not have the extras and have one portion of fish and chips and we’ll share” “You’re gonna muck up my till!” Well woopty doo! She then huffing and puffing modified our troublesome order and we finally got our meal wrapped in paper. No waiter service or silverware. Kris had a little look for a useful document called a food hygiene certificate, which seemed to be absent, he mentioned this to her at which point appeared the face of shock and then came the excuses, please pass me the oscar!!! We left her rattled and went off to eat our food, best in the world…I think not.

The glitzy Sky Tower
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We met back up with our ex-PE teacher and were taken to a vineyard where we stayed for 15mins or so as it was not the reason we had gone to the island. We mentioned this to him and he appeared amazed that there were actually people who visit the island who didn’t want to get drunk at the vineyards. With a tear in his eye he drove us to a track leading off to the coast and gave us directions to “His spot” and there he left us. We wandered along the track and found a super little beach cove to ourselves, yes on the busy public holiday not another soul there! We set up on the beach and Kris like the little rock hopping monkey that he is found fresh oysters on the rocks and there I had my first fresh free range oyster, tasted of the sea! I couldn’t coax Mad into having one! We then all walked down into the bright blue sea with the sun beaming down on us! It was great, all it was missing was a pod of Dolphins to jump out of the water with us! We reluctantly headed back to the ferry after a few hours and headed home!

Chinese New Year celebrations on the North Shore
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Goat island and tarwhanui…

We headed back to Goat island on our second attempt of snorkelling, as there had been no swell on that coast, much to my dismay as there had been bugger all surf! We got into the water and we could see pretty well. So we paddled out towards the island were we saw numerous fish, snapper and other fish that I can’t remember the names of! After a while we met with Kris and Andrea and eventually paddled against the current back to the shore! Not content with this snorkelling adventure we set off to another beach called Tarwhanui, we were all a bit concerned as the rain was coming sideways at us at one point but as changeable as New Zealand weather is, we ended up with brilliant sunshine for the rest of the afternoon on the beach! The surf wasn’t great so we ended up body surfing instead which was great fun, went pretty far too!