It was a productive and restful day in Auckland, getting laundry done and doing a bit of shopping. We went to a Japanese restaurant a scant block from our house, treating ourselves to dinner out before heading into camp-land again.
From Auckland, we took the ferry from Auckland City ferry terminal, which was just down the hill from our apartment, to Half Moon Bay, avoiding the mess of getting out of the city. We used our Auckland Transport card and got there for about NZ$4.20 each, which was a bargain since it probably saved us at least 20 miles of riding out of the city.
Once we landed in Half Moon Bay, we navigated through suburbia to more open roads, with the first 10 miles or so experiencing pretty heavy truck traffic as we were passing by a gravel quarry along the way. Once past that, all was good and we were mostly along the coast until Kawakawa, where we stopped for lunch before tackling a steep hill and then descending to Orere Point, our destination being a posh campground where we re-intersected with the Rennie’s for our last camp night together. A family of ducks was also waiting for us, and muesli seemed quite welcome! We also met a woman from Darwin Australia who is also doing the TA (Tour Aotearoa) route like us. She was super-minimally packed, but wondered aloud if she should have brought more comforts of home after seeing our setup. It’s all a trade-off!
From Orere, we headed south towards Paeroa, some 55 miles away, but mostly flat once we got over the coastal hills. Still we climbed over 1400 feet, and battled strong headwinds most of the day. It was much harder than it seemed that morning when we left
It was the longest ride the kids had ever done, easily eclipsing their previous record of 60KM since today was 90KM! They did amazing…complaining less than us and riding strongly all day. We’ll part from them at the end of today, as they are staying with family for a couple days and we are staying in a local B&B. We’ll have dinner with them tomorrow, but tonight we ate lamb shanks over mashed potatoes in a local restaurant. Really good.
We’re staying at the B&B for a couple nights to avoid the worst of the weather coming in the next days.
1.68 inches of rain are predicted tomorrow and then another 1.3 the following day when we will be riding again. We woke in the night to howling winds and heavy rain and smiled as we fell back to sleep knowing that we would not be pedaling in the morning. The wind begins to die down on Saturday, so we’ll have some rain but less wind.
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