Friday Jan 19 - Escape from Auckland!

Sorry, we didn’t want to say it, but Auckland has been disappointing for us both. The weather, the street people, the hotel - just the whole energy of the place isn’t what we expected.  We set off on foot this morning to get our rental car and the walk took us past the U. of Auckland and the gateway to their grounds. Amazing trees.

We were there at the rental office on time but the car wasn’t - ready anyway.  After close to a half hour wait for ‘cleaning’ they brought round our Toyota - still filthy, just wet.  The car itself is ok but Apex car rentals - not on the ball today.

We drove back to the hotel and retrieved our bags only to find two more derelicts sitting right behind the boot (trunk) smoking. They didn’t even move away for us to load our cases. Like we have indicated, time to move on.

And in moving on things immediately started to look up.  Getting around New Zealand seems pretty easy so far, there just aren’t that many roads.  We drove up north to Paihia today in the Bay of Islands area. On the way we stopped for coffee and a meat pie.  When was the last time you saw one of these ketchup dispensers?

Paihia is stunning. We have a day to explore here but plainly we won’t even scratch the surface.  So we decided to explore some hospitality instead.

For those of you interested in our washroom series of pictures - here is a quirky one. Note the rather public and lofty placement of one fixture!

We had a great dinner on the dock planning our next day’s activities.  Stay tuned, I wonder if we can get it all in.

Here’s a look at just part of the Paihia area.