Auckland: Part 3

Check out the beautiful colors on those Hallertau brews.

From the Auckland airport, "Good Bye New Zealand!"
(Notice the new pink, organic cotton tiki shirt in both pictures that Kailani refuses to change out of.)

09.21.08: Our third and last time in Auckland hasn’t been very exciting. We drove into a campground in south Auckland, near the airport, from Raglan, made dinner and crashed for the night. The next day, Kailani bee-lined it right to the playground and made friends with a couple older girls (four and six, I think) from Australia who were just ending their trip here as well. It seems many people use this campground as their last stop (pretty obvious, due to the full trash/recycle cans and leftovers in their kitchen) before returning their vehicle to the airport and flying out. Their family of five had been camping around both the north and south island for 59 days, which beat us by a week and a half. Wow!

After that, we started getting ready to leave the country for Hawaii. Our first stop was to Kumeu, to go back to the shop where we got our board. We wanted to return the book, New Zealand Surf Guide, that Bryan, the owner of Hardcore Surf, let us borrow. We also talked about selling the board back to him, but ended up liking the great price that he sold it to us for, and decided to keep it. Instead of selling us a board bag, he was nice enough to package it up for our flight. He supplied a cardboard box and we ended up using our NZ wool duvet as cushion. That worked out great, as it was an investment to acquire and I hated to see it left here, but didn’t think it was worth it to ship/carry home.

Kumeu is also a wine region, and after taking care of business, we were hungry for lunch. We ended up at the Hallertau Brewbar and Restaurant, co-located with the Riverhead Winery. Sean ended up with a beer tasting “paddle” and I ended up with a sparkling fruit wine (boysenberry, feijoa, pear and apple cider) tasting “paddle”. We had some great seafood chowder as well as trying their ostrich burger (with a slice of beetroot, which is standard in all Oz and NZ burgers). Along with the warm apple crisp and Westbrook Dessert Reisling (which they call dessert wines “stickies” here), all was great.

Our last order of business was to check into a hotel so we could unload all our junk and sort it out, pack some, send some home via post, throw away trash, etc. I thought I finally found a place, but as we got there, it ended up being RIGHT in the heart of Auckland with lots of people walking around and traffic. They didn’t have a car park (parking lot) on-site, but had a loading zone in front and garage around the block. When I went in, I came to find the garage wasn’t tall enough to fit our camper. So, we spent the rest of the afternoon driving around until we found another room. Although this suburban motel unit wasn’t as nice as the downtown apartment, it was on the ground floor and had free parking right in front of our door.

The next day, we were still taking care of business, packing and shipping some stuff back to CA. We ended up with a TON of stuff! Luckily, we were able to get a box from the hotel, and ended up needing/getting another from the post office. And the cost for shipping those boxes back? Let’s just say…ouch!!! After that, we went to lunch at a quaint little café down the street in Parnell. Then, we went back to our room to sort out the rest of our junk.

On Wednesday, we took a ride to the airport so we could drop off our surfboard to be stored for a day. We figured it would be easier to take it while we still had the camper, rather than trying to find transportation that would be able to handle it. After, we went to the Auckland CBD (downtown area or “Central Business District”) for some lunch and last minute souvenir shopping. Last time we were in Auckland (on our way to Kelly Tarlton’s Antartic Adventure), I spotted a sign for a Chinese restaurant that looked good. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out where it was again when it was time to eat lunch that day. This time around, I finally figured out where it was. So, that’s where we went for lunch. The restaurant is called China and it’s right off Quay Street sort of behind the big Foodtown. They serve Yum Char (dim sum) all day, and we all ate more than we thought we would. There were lots of people eating there, but not so many that we couldn’t get a table, and many Asians. For us, that always seems to be a good sign. (Well, Asians at least in Asian restaurant.) Fortunately, we walked some of it off doing that last minute shopping. From there, it was time to drop off our camper. With that and the afternoon almost gone, we went back to our hotel, finished packing everything up and set the alarm clock for the crack of dawn.

From Aotearoa (New Zealand) with aroha (love, same as “aloha” in Hawaiian) here are just a few things we will most remember about this country: the beautiful green landscape and the friendly people; great waves in clean, CLEAN water; beaches teaming with life, all the mussels, oysters and kina (urchins, or so Kailani calls “Ivans”, from the movie “Surf’s Up”) that we ate; how unpopulated it is compared to California (as I say, just as many sheep and cow in NZ as people in CA). I’m sure there’s much, much more than that too!