Adventures of the Superfly: September 2007

2007-04-01

Yay, it's roadtrip time again! Pieter started working 2 weeks ago and spent that time in Auckland on product training. Saturday morning I flew to Auckland to join Pieter in a little roadtrip adventure.

I arrived in Auckland after a quite uneventfull flight. Pieter met me at the airport and we set of for the first stop. Auckland ferry terminal. Now I'm sure you're wondering why we were heading to Aucland ferry terminal since we are ultimately heading south to Wellington. To be quite honest, the explanation is quite simple. Auckland is surrounded by quite a few small islands, which are quite off the beaten track... And that is exactly where we were headed. I head an awesome quote this week "The beaten track is an easy journey but the traffic is horrible!" hehe, anyhow, traffic or no traffic, we were straying from the beaten track, leaving the highway and hunting solitary spaces. Destination - "Waiheke island" Waiheke Island is a 45 minute ferry ride from Auckland harbour. Even the ferry trip is quite scenic. As we left the hustle and bustle of New Zealand's largest city in our wake (pardon the pun hehe), I turned my face to the sun and breathed freedom of salty air as a massive container ship parted the horizon... The route to Waiheke is littered with odd little volcano islands, seagulls, and a colourfull collage of sails in various shapes and sizes. Auckland isn't called the "city of sails" for nothing! No sooner had we arrived at the island than we were ushered to a tour bus and taken on a little joyride around the island. Waiheke has a vibrant close knit community of 7000 residents. It is a place where people still wave at each other as they passed by, where "the selling price of the house on the hill, you know the one with the great view?" is the talk of the town. Warm people, lovely scenery and lots of places you could get just lost enough to have an adventure!
(Have I mentioned the Norwegian ladies?)

Anyhow, our tour did somewhat of a round trip of the Island. The local rugby team were playing some club from Auckland with quite a few locals out in support. Next were the vinyards and hilly bit (everything is hilly but this part was even more so!) As we got to the pinnacle of the hilly section, Keith, our tourguide / busdriver interrupted his consant, and quite amusing commentary, with one of 3 pit-stops. We got out for some photo's and to enjoy the scenery. The amount of space and water that greeted this view destroyed any perception of distance you might have had. To the east the coromandel peninsula embraces your view leaving a huge gulf in wich the cloud covered great barrier island is only just visible. A few leagues down the cliff we were standing on lay a large white sandy beach, inviting indeed... The beach is split in two by a cliff-faced headland running through it's heart. The left side, and smaller one of the two is the local nudie beach and the larger, righthand side of the beach was the loacal family beach. Funny that! As it goes with little towns and small places, each cove and every hill has a story. We were lucky enough to have a tour guide that knew all of these and were all too happy to share them! It is quite amasing how colourfull the people are in small communities like these. They aren't part of a statistic, they're definitely not just a number and they're not even the "guy down the road with the nice garden"... Small places like this go as personal as "oh that's jim, he's a hard case but we all love him... you know his son played for the all blacks back in 1974, was quite the player too. Man he loves a game of footy (football)! I once invited them over for dinner and they damn near ate my house too giggle giggle, they sure are big boys..." Yup, small towns sure are different!

After our tour we stopped in the town centre and ate lunch while enjoying a "view envied by the gods"... Really people, even a picture worth a thousand words would not do the view any justice... The norwegian ladies did help some and with their excellent waitering skills and friendly conversation we almost missed our bus... To be honest, I couldn't care and wanted to stay longer but alas... we had to leave. Back in auckland we started the journey south. Pieter's new job lavished him with a new model Nissan station wagon. Space age ergonomics meet japanese enginuity. Enough said. We talked about this that and every other thing for the next 4 hours as we gradually won the tug of war and pulled lake taupo in sight!

Our first stop was just around the bend... that is if one of the largest volcanic crater lakes on the planet has a bend around which you could go hehe. Anyhow, around we went to find our host for the evening quitetly waiting (at 10 pm mind you)
The lovely Japanese people at "Samurai Lodge" - Taurangi took real good care of us, I highly recommend them if you need a place to stay in the Taupo area.

And with the usual happy ending... some photos! Same old thing, click on the image to see it full size :o)

The Ferry Building in Auckland... and the 2 remaining stooges