Category Archives: North Island

We are moving to a smaller cabin today – the park want to charge us the full price for the two-room unit even though it still hasn’t been cleaned, so we opted for a single room with kitchen. But by midday the smaller cabin still isn’t ready for us to move into so we pack all our stuff into the car and head into Auckland. We are armed with the addresses of a few camping shops on Broadway, but all of them turn out to be the sort that specialise in branded, specialist outdoor equipment with prices to match. Not the sort of stuff which is only required for five-week trip. We end up buying a couple of sleeping bags and some other bits and pieces at a household store for a fraction of the price. As it turns out sleeping bags come in useful sooner than expected as we return to the holiday park to discover that the smaller cabin doesn’t have a full set of linen – only pillow cases and bottom sheet are provided.

We take a detour around through the suburbs of Mission Bay and …..

After dinner we walk to the the Lone Star, a themed restaurant and bar which is the nearest place to get a drink. It feels empty even though there are a few people eating and drinking. The staff wear T-shirts with the slogan ‘Be staunch – walk tall’ the significance being lost on us – perhaps its a New Zealand thing? And on the wall hang posters of Elvis, Johnny Cash and The Magnificent Seven – starting to get the idea? And despite it being the height of summer there is an open gas fire burning. Hopefully there will be better to come!

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Gloriously hot, sunny day without a cloud in the sky. We’ve decided to stay and extra night here as we are unlikely to be able to get anything else over the holiday weekend. We’re hoping that someone one might leave today and we can move into a cheaper cabin or a camping pitch as even at a discounted rate the chalet is way over our budget. But to our surprise we are offered another night at the even lower rate of $50 (down from the already discounted rate of $80) so we are staying put for another night at least.

We are finding it difficult to negotiate the road system here; there seem to be very few directional signs and exits from motorways aren’t numbered, instead signs carry the road names that slip roads lead onto. So it’s essential to have a highly detailed maps with all the street names marked – which we haven’t got. We got completely lost yesterday getting from the car rental office to the caravan park and today we struggle to find our way into Auckland city centre and get hopelessly disorientated trying to find our way out again. Tomorrow we will be investing in a proper map rather than relying on any of the many freebies we seem to have acquired either from the car hire office or the caravan park.

Auckland city centre has the feel of a small town and is very hilly – a bit like San Franscisco but on a much smaller scale. The city is remarkably empty for a Saturday and the car park is almost deserted. We assume that most peope must be away for the holiday weekend. Even the Queen Street, which is the main shopping street running south to north towards the quays is hardly heaving with Saturday shoppers. We have a picnic lunch in Albert Park which is just to the east of Queens Street which runs from south to north through the centre. Its a pretty park with a statue of Queen Victoria and the remnants of the Chinese New Year decorations: red laterns, a dragon in the fountain that sort of thing.

After trying to shop unsuccessfully for some camping equipment to supplement the tent and chairs provided free of charge by the car rental company – we figure that having the option to camp will give us greater flexibility and keep our costs down. – we attempt to find our way back to Manukau and the holiday park. We eventually manage to find the Great South Road which takes us straight to the park, but not without first going north and west out of the centre of the city. We blame it all on the poor quality maps!

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We arrive on time in Brisbane for our connecting flight to Auckland at 9am. The abruptness bordering on rudeness of the Qantas staff both in the air and on the ground comes as something of a shock after south-east Asia and the prices in Brisbane airport complete the shock of being back in the developed world. We have a couple of hours wait in what turns out to be a sizeable airport before we board at around 8.30am.

Coming into Auckland the weather is glorious and the views from the plane are to die for – the sky is clear and the cliffs on the west coast and the expanse of Manukau Harbour stretch out below us.

We are hiring a car for the whole five weeks of our stay in New Zealand with a company called Juicy Cars who turn out to be a bit of a muppet outfit. They are offering three levels of insurance cover but can’t adequately explain the cover each provides and up until this point we hadn’t been aware that insurance isn’t compulsory in New Zealand and consequently 80 per cent of drivers are uninsured. Of course, hire companies insist that you take at least minimum third party cover but that still involves losing a bond of $1000 even if a no fault a claim is made plus an additional excess of $2,500. There are four levels of cover to chose from but we are struggling to get any clear understanding of what is and isn’t covered. In the end we opt for what must be the equivalent of fully comprehensive – no bond, no excess, every eventuality covered (we think) as even the best of the rest seems only to cover body work and excludes any damage to the underside or roof of the car.

But the best is yet to come when we inspect the car. OK the car category is ‘El Cheapo’ but we weren’t prepared for what greeted us. Almost ever inch of the bodywork is covered in either dents, scratches or peeling paint. Otherwise it is in quite good condition. How it got into such a state is hard to imagine, but at least there is small likelihood of anyone being tempted to steal it!

We have booked (or at least think we have booked) a cabin on a caravan park in Manukau City a short distance from the airport and a few miles south of Auckland. In fact, Manukau isn’t really a city but a small town with a shopping centre – more of an outlying suburb. When we arrive at the Caravan park we discover that they haven’t received our booking and its New Zealand Day national holiday and the park is completely full. We ring the three nearest sites in the same network each at least an hour’s drive away and they are all fully booked. At which point we’re offered a two-room chalet, but it hasn’t been cleaned and we will have to change the sheets ourselves- but we can have it at a discount. We take it! The chalet turns out to be surprisingly spacious with a large living room and a fully equipped kitchen. It’s so good to have such space after months of staying in hotels and hostels and we can cook! After getting some supplies at the local supermarket, I cook for the first time in five months!

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