NZAU Day 2 Auckland

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We arrived in Auckland Friday the 30th at 6 AM after completely losing Thursday due to crossing the International Date Line. The flight from Baltimore to Houston was 3 1/2 hours, an hour and a half in the terminal in Houston, and a 14 1/2 hour flight from Houston to Auckland. Not very restful, but uneventful as all good flights are. It took some time to get through customs as they need to check our tent for biological pathogens. The tent passed, as did all our luggage, and within an hour we were outside the airport in the 75 degree weather putting the bikes back together.

It took a little longer than I expected to reassemble the bikes as I was running on fumes. Dana was busy scanning the internet trying to find us a nice park to park in and get a little rest. It took until almost 11:30 before I got everything built and panniers attached and clothes and camping equipment transferred, etc., etc. As I was working a number of airport employees came past and offered welcomes and occasionally some info. One guy said our timing was impeccable as the weather had just turned nice from the rainy season and that if we had come a week earlier we’d have been very wet. Another offered a tip on a park where we could camp.

We rode out into the NZ sun and headed to the Ambury Regional Park. We checked out the campground (OK, but oriented to camping vehicles and no shade anywhere), and had a nice, refreshing snooze on a quiet slope under a shade tree. After that nap, we walked around the trails of the park and met our first wildlife, the Pukeko — dark black feathers, a purplish breast, and bright red beak. They were as numerous as crows are back home. Nearer the park center where there were lots of people, they were much less skittish than the ones on the trails who headed for the brush just as we saw them.

After the park, we headed into Downtown Auckland but were distracted by hunger and a local pub where we had a couple of beers and looked for a motel for the evening. We had tried a number of warm showers hosts in Auckland, but got a lot of “I’m on Tour”s and “Sorry, we’re out of town that weekend.” So, fallback was the clean but nondescript Greenlane Motel, not to be confused with the Greenlane Manor Motel which is where Google guided us first. The powered gate was a clue that we weren’t at the right place, but the woman at the desk was very kind and directed us further down the Great South Road to the GM, not the GMM.

We got showers and headed out for a great Thai meal in the Ellerslie neighborhood of Auckland. After that, we headed back to the motel for a hard crash and a very welcome long night’s sleep.