Mar 5/11 4:29pm
Well it's clearly been some time before we've been in a large city based on how quickly city-induced anxiety set in as we got into Auckland today. At the moment we've got ourselves a cabin for the night but only after calling through a few parks who were fully booked! Yikes. We haven't been able to reach the guy who wants to buy the car so unfortunately we find ourselves biding time until we hear from him. If we scoot north without letting him have a look he might not want to buy it but hanging around the city wasn't really in our plans. We've come up sooner than we thought as we told him around the 10th so it seems like he might be away for the weekend or something and we only gave him a day's notice that we'd be here. So, don't know how long we'll give him but if sacrificing 2-3 days now means we have a guaranteed buyer at the end of the month it might have to be that way. We'd rather not come back down after moving northwards so we shall wait. It's rainy and crummy out so we aren't exactly missing much and this cabin has a little fridge, a sink, a toaster and kettle! Oh the luxuries you forget about! Typically it's just a set of bunk beds, and sometimes a table. There's even dishes here. So ok there can be some good things about the big smoke. The McDonald's we popped into for free wi-fi actually had powerpoints that you could plug into too!
We planned our trip to Hot Water Beach yesterday just right though. It was hot out and we got there right at low tide so that gave us 1-2 hours before the tide was too high to dig a hot pool. Us and about 200 of our closest friends packed into an area roughly 100m by about 30m. There are only certain spots on the beach where you find the hot springs coming up so when we got there we found a heap of pools that were dug out already but all of them were cool water so we were getting confused before asking some people and found where to dig. The holiday park we stayed at had free spades to borrow so we were equipped. However, it turns out that digging in sand is actually quite difficult because the sides always cave in and where the sand was wet it just kind of filled itself back up so you end up digging a pool that holds only a few inches of water because there's no room to put the excess sand without putting it into someone else's pool and because you move away from the hot spring if you go too far. So, oh well we spent a little while sitting with our feet in it. Then when Dustin got restless I laid out and it was a bit better. It was amazingly hot at the source though and we had to warn people who wanted to sit in the original pool we were in - we had to make it longer so that it cooled off a bit because it was "scalding" as the kids said that hung around me for a little while.
Back at the holiday park we got hit with rain as evening fell but no flooding on our campsite. The park we were at used to be a dairy farm so the camping area was just a field of grass anyways which was plush. But after 8 nights sleeping on the ground our old bodies were starting to feel the aches and pains so a nice bed to sleep in tonight is going to be awesome. Even if it's a bunk bed haha.
Hopefully this stop cures the bit of road-weariness that we've been feeling lately. We've been sleeping kind of poorly the last couple nights because it's actually been really hot in the tent but leaving the fly open risks being rained on. We might end up making our WWOOFing stay a bit longer so that we don't get to Australia completely knackered. There is some good diving up the east coast of Northland here so Dustin will definitely be getting into the water soon for that. Other than that, and taking a look at some towns on the west coast that we passed by last time we don't have a lot of "must-do's" left on our list. And I think because they are "must-do's" it somehow makes them less satisfying when you do them because there's expectations around them. A few of the stops have been overrated in our opinion - a la Hot Water Beach.
It's been so crazy to watch the fuel prices here rise since we arrived. Diesel used to be $1.18/litre back in August and today we filled up for $1.50/litre! Petrol is over $2.05/litre though so we consider ourselves lucky. Some of it has been government tax increases and lately it's apparently due to world conflict as it's apparently increasing everywhere. We haven't been watching a lot of news lately so I'm not sure exactly. We still get really weird reactions when we tell people we lived in New Plymouth - today the guy outright said "yuck" haha. So it's got a bad rap somehow but the more and more we have other cities to compare it to, the more we realize how nice it was there. At one point I suggested we just ride out the rest of the trip back in that area. But the curiosity got the better of us and we'll continue onwards.
I picked up this amazing cookbook a little while ago called The Free Range Cook by Annabel Langbein and I cannot wait to have a kitchen of my own again to try some of the recipes. The WWOOFing host we most recently stayed with had the book and he couldn't recommend it enough. I had seen in shops and the author also has a tv show here. There's tons of great things and they are generally from scratch, based on keeping things simple. So far it's one of the only souvenirs that we've picked up I think. haha. It's always funny returning to Canada after being away so long and having to list what's coming home and it not even amounting to $200/each really. I'm sure we'll find some other goodies though.
Dustin sold his surfboard online so we dropped it off on our way yesterday. It worked out so well because the guy was going away for the weekend to the Coromandel and we were just leaving so he gave us an address and it was a short little side trip to a lovely area that I would probably holiday in if we lived here. It was a quiet little area with a lovely beach. Now we have this extra travel surfboard bag to work on selling since we no longer have 2 boards to cart around. Once that's gone we'll even be able to stick the board in the car if it's raining! Which will be so nice because the rack we have straps through the door frames so it causes a bit of leakage since it tightens over the weather stripping. It's not something you can avoid with this type of rack though and our solution has just been to tie pieces of an old bathmat around the strap inside so that it doesn't drip on us. The NZ way is to be innovative and very DIY so we've definitely embraced that. Another example is that we seem to have lost our drip coffee maker - just the plastic one that you stick a filter in and sit over top of the cup. So, Dustin cut off the bottom of an extra plastic wine glass we had (the set had 4 in it...) and voila it's been working just fine. They don't really do drip/filter coffee here so hunting for a new one would prove to be annoying I reckon. They mostly drink espresso drinks here or it's freeze dried and instant coffee.
Well, I guess I don't really have that many stories at the moment so I will wrap this up. Wish us luck getting in touch with our possible car buyer and hopefully the next time I write it won't be from Auckland!
Well it's clearly been some time before we've been in a large city based on how quickly city-induced anxiety set in as we got into Auckland today. At the moment we've got ourselves a cabin for the night but only after calling through a few parks who were fully booked! Yikes. We haven't been able to reach the guy who wants to buy the car so unfortunately we find ourselves biding time until we hear from him. If we scoot north without letting him have a look he might not want to buy it but hanging around the city wasn't really in our plans. We've come up sooner than we thought as we told him around the 10th so it seems like he might be away for the weekend or something and we only gave him a day's notice that we'd be here. So, don't know how long we'll give him but if sacrificing 2-3 days now means we have a guaranteed buyer at the end of the month it might have to be that way. We'd rather not come back down after moving northwards so we shall wait. It's rainy and crummy out so we aren't exactly missing much and this cabin has a little fridge, a sink, a toaster and kettle! Oh the luxuries you forget about! Typically it's just a set of bunk beds, and sometimes a table. There's even dishes here. So ok there can be some good things about the big smoke. The McDonald's we popped into for free wi-fi actually had powerpoints that you could plug into too!
We planned our trip to Hot Water Beach yesterday just right though. It was hot out and we got there right at low tide so that gave us 1-2 hours before the tide was too high to dig a hot pool. Us and about 200 of our closest friends packed into an area roughly 100m by about 30m. There are only certain spots on the beach where you find the hot springs coming up so when we got there we found a heap of pools that were dug out already but all of them were cool water so we were getting confused before asking some people and found where to dig. The holiday park we stayed at had free spades to borrow so we were equipped. However, it turns out that digging in sand is actually quite difficult because the sides always cave in and where the sand was wet it just kind of filled itself back up so you end up digging a pool that holds only a few inches of water because there's no room to put the excess sand without putting it into someone else's pool and because you move away from the hot spring if you go too far. So, oh well we spent a little while sitting with our feet in it. Then when Dustin got restless I laid out and it was a bit better. It was amazingly hot at the source though and we had to warn people who wanted to sit in the original pool we were in - we had to make it longer so that it cooled off a bit because it was "scalding" as the kids said that hung around me for a little while.
Back at the holiday park we got hit with rain as evening fell but no flooding on our campsite. The park we were at used to be a dairy farm so the camping area was just a field of grass anyways which was plush. But after 8 nights sleeping on the ground our old bodies were starting to feel the aches and pains so a nice bed to sleep in tonight is going to be awesome. Even if it's a bunk bed haha.
Hopefully this stop cures the bit of road-weariness that we've been feeling lately. We've been sleeping kind of poorly the last couple nights because it's actually been really hot in the tent but leaving the fly open risks being rained on. We might end up making our WWOOFing stay a bit longer so that we don't get to Australia completely knackered. There is some good diving up the east coast of Northland here so Dustin will definitely be getting into the water soon for that. Other than that, and taking a look at some towns on the west coast that we passed by last time we don't have a lot of "must-do's" left on our list. And I think because they are "must-do's" it somehow makes them less satisfying when you do them because there's expectations around them. A few of the stops have been overrated in our opinion - a la Hot Water Beach.
It's been so crazy to watch the fuel prices here rise since we arrived. Diesel used to be $1.18/litre back in August and today we filled up for $1.50/litre! Petrol is over $2.05/litre though so we consider ourselves lucky. Some of it has been government tax increases and lately it's apparently due to world conflict as it's apparently increasing everywhere. We haven't been watching a lot of news lately so I'm not sure exactly. We still get really weird reactions when we tell people we lived in New Plymouth - today the guy outright said "yuck" haha. So it's got a bad rap somehow but the more and more we have other cities to compare it to, the more we realize how nice it was there. At one point I suggested we just ride out the rest of the trip back in that area. But the curiosity got the better of us and we'll continue onwards.
I picked up this amazing cookbook a little while ago called The Free Range Cook by Annabel Langbein and I cannot wait to have a kitchen of my own again to try some of the recipes. The WWOOFing host we most recently stayed with had the book and he couldn't recommend it enough. I had seen in shops and the author also has a tv show here. There's tons of great things and they are generally from scratch, based on keeping things simple. So far it's one of the only souvenirs that we've picked up I think. haha. It's always funny returning to Canada after being away so long and having to list what's coming home and it not even amounting to $200/each really. I'm sure we'll find some other goodies though.
Dustin sold his surfboard online so we dropped it off on our way yesterday. It worked out so well because the guy was going away for the weekend to the Coromandel and we were just leaving so he gave us an address and it was a short little side trip to a lovely area that I would probably holiday in if we lived here. It was a quiet little area with a lovely beach. Now we have this extra travel surfboard bag to work on selling since we no longer have 2 boards to cart around. Once that's gone we'll even be able to stick the board in the car if it's raining! Which will be so nice because the rack we have straps through the door frames so it causes a bit of leakage since it tightens over the weather stripping. It's not something you can avoid with this type of rack though and our solution has just been to tie pieces of an old bathmat around the strap inside so that it doesn't drip on us. The NZ way is to be innovative and very DIY so we've definitely embraced that. Another example is that we seem to have lost our drip coffee maker - just the plastic one that you stick a filter in and sit over top of the cup. So, Dustin cut off the bottom of an extra plastic wine glass we had (the set had 4 in it...) and voila it's been working just fine. They don't really do drip/filter coffee here so hunting for a new one would prove to be annoying I reckon. They mostly drink espresso drinks here or it's freeze dried and instant coffee.
Well, I guess I don't really have that many stories at the moment so I will wrap this up. Wish us luck getting in touch with our possible car buyer and hopefully the next time I write it won't be from Auckland!
good luck! :-)
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