Dude, Where’s My Cooler?

It turns out that our rainy adventures in the Bay of Islands marked the start of the ‘how to challenge your patience when travelling’ portion of our trip…

Whangarei (Funga-ray, not Wang-gahrry) is the home of a beautiful oft-photographed (now much more ‘oft’ for us having been there) 27m set of falls. Excellent. A very pleasant walk down into the valley (canyon? gorge? don’t know what that counts as?), a good scramble around the bottom – again, practically having the place to ourselves – and a very pleasant walk back up. Bob’s yer uncle.

On the 5th, we stayed at the Whangarei Falls caravan park, just around the corner, and took advantage of the brilliant sunshine to give Delores a good old cleaning. Turns out that a month in the van – even with someone as OCD about each thing having its own specific place – leads to some slight scattering of belongings. For those of you not familiar with our travel route, Rich would soon be departing NZ for a stag do (bachelor party for North Americans) in Las Vegas and then would fly around the world via London and Bangkok to meet me in Kuala Lumpur. Hard to believe it, but this worked out SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than just getting an Auckland-Vegas return ticket. All of this to say that we needed to do some reorganizing of belongings so that things no longer needed (sleeping bags, sweaters, sea salt – yep, Rich has the patience to travel with a foodie) could be deposited back in the UK rather than being schlepped around Asia for another 11 weeks. We ended up with a triage-like system of categorising the contents of the van: mine, his, either. Stuffed his bag full of everything that needed to be left behind, plus as much of the other stuff that we could fit (since his bag would be significantly lighter in a few days’ time, having jettisoned many items), and I was left with the rest (i.e. all my stuff that I couldn’t squeeze into his bag).

A good meal, a HOT tub before bed, and then we got organised and set off the next morning for Auckland in order to experience Waitangi Day in the country’s biggest city. The plan: find a hostel with a double for one night and a dorm bed for 2; ditch Delores  at the Wicked depot, get into town to check out the festivities; meet up with Scubs, who we met when staying with KB and REn in New Plymouth; get to bed at a reasonable time so that Rich could hop in a taxi at 5:30ish the next morning. What actually happened: 4 hostel stops before we found anything with beds available; unpacking the van led to the discovery that we had left the cooler, full of wine, cider and fresh groceries bought the day before, back in Whangarei; the depot was closed so we were stuck with Delores; our forays into the city to find celebrations were a complete failure (there was NOTHING happening in the downtown or wharf areas! Turns out there was a concert in the far eastern part of town that cost $20, so we wouldn’t have gone anyway). With nothing to do but laugh at the ridiculousness of the turn of events, we got more use out of our ‘brave’ faces and had a good wander through the city – made easier by the fact that we were stuck with the van and the parking in the core was FREE (my favourite word while backpacking).

We explored the downtown area, which made me feel like I’d hit some sort of magic time travel button and had arrived in Asia without realising it. Then we wandered through the very beautiful Albert Park – a place I could spend a lot of time sprawled out and reading books, but on that day was, bizarrely, just full of shirtless men. Our meanderings led us down to the Wynyard Quarter/Princes Wharf area, which was much more our cup of tea. Lots of art installations, brightly painted old storage tanks, a water feature for kids to play in, and a TON of restaurants, bars and cafés. Oh, and the Team NZ super-yacht boatshed. This last item ended up being anunexpected highlight. While walking part, Rich spotted a couple of guys in Team NZ shirts heading for the entrance, so he hustled over and asked if they knew Daniel Brooks. Turns out that they did, in fact, know Brooksy, but didn’t know if he was in yet, so they gave him a call and chatted for a minute, before handing the phone over to Rich so that he could find out when Brooksy was coming to work. In half an hour? Sweet as, bro. The exchange with the two guys pretty much summarised our experience with Kiwis: doesn’t matter if they’ve met you ten times, once, or never, if you ask for help it’s going to be given.

We wandered a little more and then met Brooksy on the sidewalk outside the sheds, before being invited into the yard for a tour. Team NZ had been on the news the day before because they had just christened (or whatever you do to new super-yachts) this year’s Louis Vuitton Cup/Americas Cup super-yacht – and that’s what we got a look at. The boat that we were shown was still in parts because, from what I understand, they build two boats and one stays partly unassembled because it is used for parts in case of emergency (and, in this kind of racing, I’m sure there are plenty of emergencies). I’m probably wrong on that, but I’m not wrong about the boat being in parts. :)

Not being a sailor, I had no real understanding of the sheer magnitude of engineering genius that goes into these boats, or of the scale of them. The main catamaran is larger than some houses, but has a solid surface area that would maybe be the size of the average kitchen. The one-tonne sail was housed in a separate shed with sides formed by three BIG shipping containers laid end to end on either side, with the containers not even close to touching – and the sail was still a bit longer than that. As far as trip highlights that are unrelated to food or scenery, this tour ranked pretty darn high. With smiles and words of thanks, we set off to meet Scubs at a BBQ a little ways from our hostel.

Turns out it wasn’t a BBQ – it was a full-fledged outdoor dinner. Grilled fish sliders (mini burgers), parmesan and coconut chicken pieces, chicken skewers, sausages, a couple of salads and punch that led me to explain the term ‘purple Jesus’ (much enjoyed by our hosts). Oh, and yet again, Kiwi hospitality was shining as brightly as the late-afternoon sun we were all enjoying. Did I mention we didn’t know the hosts? No? Well. We kind of do now. Apparently, it’s not a big deal to have a couple of random backpackers show up at your house, so Michelle and Nick, you’ll probably never see this, but thanks for a lovely evening. Dishes were the least we could do as thanks.

Up at 5:20 the next morning, at the depot just before 6, Rich into a cab at 6, me trying to snooze in the van on the side of the road in an industrial estate until about 7:45, when I gave up and opened my eyes to see three German men staring in at me. Well and truly awake now. Turns out two of them were being dropped off at the depot to collect a van of their own, so they were just coming to inspect Delores, but seriously – is it not a globally accepted fact that it’s impolite to linger around a vehicle containing a single woman??

I had 2 days to see what Auckland had to offer and my plan was to eat. As Rich has decided, I’m a foodaholic (I pointed out that, since it is required to continue existing, isn’t everyone technically a foodaholic?), so I wanted to see some of what the city had to offer to the budget-savvy. I started with coffee and a cinnoman roll/scone at Alleluya, where I sat and painstakingly typed my last blog entry on my iPhone, taking full advantage of their wifi. Then I walked. And walked. And walked. My day took me from Mt Eden to K’ Rd to Ponsonby to Ponsonby to Ponsonby back down Dominion to return to the hostel, before getting sidetracked by a last-minute speed-hike – Diane would’ve been proud – up Mount Eden in time for sunset (highly recommend, without the ‘speed-hike’ portion), and then back down the moutain in the dark (can’t say I recommend that part)… I went up and down this stretch a few times, trying to hunt down Nick’s (the not-BBQ BBQ host) bar, Golden Dawn. No signage, which I knew in advance, but still – trying to find an unmarked door is surprisingly difficult (see gallery for photo of door)! Would’ve been made much easier if I had remembered that I had stored the address in my phone, but that would take the fun out of exploring, wouldn’t it? Eventually found it, and entered into a darkened space that made the whole thing feel very Prohibition-esque. Neat spot. Cocktails aren’t priced in the backpacker-friendly range, but then we aren’t their target market. Dangerously good punch, which fortunately bore no resemblance to the purple Jesus I’d had the night before, or I would’ve had a rather difficult time remembering where I was staying, let alone getting myself there. Dinner was some bun bo, one of my favourite Vietnamese dishes from our last travels, at the international food hall just down the road. A little heavy on the iceberg lettuce, which shouldn’t have been there at all, but enjoyable all the same. The acoustic singer who started playing at the bar across the street did much to improve the food court ambience, too.

The highlight of my stay in the city was most definitely the view from the top of Mount Eden. 360-degree panoramas of the city, showing in multiple cases, why Auckland lives up to it’s nickname of ‘the city of sails’. Awesome end to a very pleasant, if once again husbandless, day.

**Included in this batch of photos: your very own tour of Delores. Note the daytime lounge (aka front seat), evening lounge/bedroom (the middle cupboard has a detachable leg to make a table; the mattresses cover the whole platform to sleep) and the kitchen/pantry (aka the trunk). Luxury travel at its finest… :) Also included, a shot of a dog with his head under the driveway gate – think, just MAYBE , that he wanted to come out to play.

Grateful for: Kiwi hospitality (once again), a back-up pair of flip flops