Category Archives: New Zealand

Hattieontour.eu has gone down due to a problem with the server. Whether this will be rectified we don’t know and worse case we could lose all our blog posts. Fortunately all the posts on our hard drive, but we are trying not to think about the time and effort that would be required to reload them all onto an alternative server. Frustration with communications technology has reached breaking point since we arrived in New Zealand where the internet infrastructure is much less advanced than in south-east Asia. It is much more expensive to get onto the net here and far less reliable. Just at the time when we need to be in regular contact with our letting agent in London to finalise the re-letting of one of the studio flats, we are having the greatest difficulty sending emails and making mobile calls. We’ve taken free high-speed wifi internet access for granted for granted for the last 5 months and it’s a shock to find that it’s not widely available here and the price for dial-up can be as high as $9 (£3.25 an hour).

We leave Matakohe around 10.30am (check out is at the unreasonably early hour of 10am) having had a hair-pullingly frustrating half-an-hour on the computer trying unsuccessfully to send an email to London. (Last night we were standing in the pitch dark trying to get a wifi connection because the signal kept dropping out in the internet room – only to time out before we could finish.) Aaargh! This is supposed to be a first world country!

We are heading for Kauri Park and we stop at Dargaville, a small provincial town with a single-storey centre to get some shopping for lunch and tonight’s meal. We are also on the hunt for Lonely Planet’s New Zealand guide although we don’t hold out much hope of finding a copy here. To our surprise, though, we find it in the most unlikey-looking book-cum-card shop. We also stumble upon a ‘proper’ camping shop selling the tents and other camping paraphernalia we couldn’t get in the ‘smart’ outdoor shops of Auckland.

The holiday park at Kauri is in a stunningly beautiful location enclosed on three sides by the wide meander of a small river and surrounded on all sides by kauri-forested hills. The site itself is immaculately maintained and there is tubing on the river (if you’re into that sort of thing) as well as swimming. We are in a cabin but there is camping on the river bank and we would be tempted to take a pitch if it wasn’t for the rain, which has been falling on and off all day and part of yesterday. Just our luck to be here for two of the six days rainy days in the month! Ah well, maybe it will improve tomorrow.

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We check out of the holiday park at Manukau to start our tour of the North Island. We have decided to go to Northland first which is the finger of land north of Auckland – the ‘winterless’ sub-tropical north, which at this time of year has only 6 days of rain per month and is home to a profusion of unspoilt beaches of all shapes and sizes. The weather is hot and sunny and the sky is blue as we make our way out of Auckland on highway 1 up the east coast. We take a detour east through Silverdale and along the peninsula that forms the southern edge of Whangaparaoa Bay (getting our tongues round the Maori names is proving a challenge) and at points is so narrow that sea views seem within touching distance of both sides of the road. Our first stop is Army Bay, a dark sand beach over-shadowed by low sedimentary cliffs with clearly defined layers rising at angles from the beach. At the eastern and western ends eroded bedrock protrudes from the sand. The tide is out and as the sand dries in the sun a feathered white and dark pattern starts to emerge like the topping of a Bakewell Tart. We cross the narrow isthmus that links the Shakespear Regional Park to the rest of the peninsular to reach Okaramai Bay on the southern side – a wild and beautiful bay, quiet and deserted. A perfect spot to picnic on the wide grassy verges that border the shore. The sea is a 200 or more yards out revealing a muddy expanse ripe for amateur cockle pickers – strict harvesting limits apply. Eventually we arrive at Shakespear Regional Park at the eastern end of the peninsular and take a walk through the Kauri forest up across farmland to the vantage point on the cliffs at the eastern most tip. From here is is possible to get the most spectacular 360 degree view of the surrounding coastline, the islands to the north, the rolling countryside and a view of Auckland to the south.

After retracing our drive we continue our journey north, stopping a few kilometres up the coast to lunch on the windswept beach of the Hibiscus Coast. This long expanse of sand is all but empty except for a few kite surfers and swimmers braving the breakers whipped up by the gusty conditions.

We make our way north via Warkworth and Wellsford through spectaularly breath-taking scenery. Beautiful vistas of rolling farmland of gold, green and brown stretch out before us at every twist and turn. At Brynderwyn we turn west to to our destination of Matakohe, a small village (no shop here) for our overnight stop in a holiday park overlooking the tidal estuary of the Matakohe river. In the fading light of the late evening we stroll down to the cockleshell beach. The mudflats are home to 1000s of the tiniest crabs which can be heard, if barely seen, scurrying across the muddy surface to disappear into burrows in the blink of an eye .

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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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