NEW ZEALAND, North Island, Orewa Etc.,6-8 Feb 2013
Northlands including Auckland, Orewa, Bream Bay Area & Whangarei
New Zealand, Northlands 6-8 feb 2013 auckland, orewa, bream bay area, whangarei, covering amongst others 63 selective slideshow images, steak and cheese pies plus frankly any kiwi pie just fab from service stations everywhere, put brit pies to shame, auckland airport, kiwi airport motel, wonderful homemade lamb curry, kiwi census, orewa, countdown supermarket car park in orewa, New World Supermarket for phone stuff plus Vodafone for wi-fi dongle (the height of technology back in 2013), the mad butcher revisited for bbq meat, auckland, norfolk pines, pohutakawa trees, red fronzes, surf club, waves hotel revisit, top 10 sites at orewa and whangerei, joined Top 10 club, twin coast discovery highway, aratoa way, bream bay, hen and chicken islands, helicopters, mangawhai, mangawhai heads, info boards, maori fables, ruakaka beach, waipu cove, spolit soil contaminated by cows, sunshine, relaxation, deep joy in northlands. We were previously in Orewa & Whangarei in 2007 and then again in 2017.
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Wednesday February 6th 2013
Arrived in Brisbane Queensland Australia at 2.35 p.m. local time, bags were in transit. We then flew on from Brisbane to Auckland, North Island, New Zealand mid afternoon local kiwi time. We were now 5 hours ahead of the local time in Georgetown Penang Malaysia, so our body clocks were somewhat out of kilter.
We were both very tired from both the flight and body clocks, super jet lagged, but managed to get a free pick-up van to the kiwi motel near the airport and unpacked some stuff and fell into bed for about an hour. Had showers, it was really all a blur, airports, planes, luggage, movies, music, eating at weird times etc etc. We then went and had a meal in the Kiwi Motel restaurant , lamb curry which was very nice and cooked by the Indian family who manage the motel. We will return and indeed did in 2017.
We even did the Kiwi census here even though we are tourists, they insisted. So if any of our descendants in the future are into Genealogy they will find us in New Zealand’s census and wonder why, this is the answer. Interestingly my parents would have emigrated to New Zealand in the mid-50s but because of Dad’s apprenticeship papers they went to Australia instead as did I since then born. We went as a family to Melbourne 1960-63.
Thursday February 7th 2013
Summary today we collected our rental van and went from the airport kiwi motel to the wonderful Orewa to the north of Auckland.
We had a continental breakfast at 8 a.m. at the Kiwi motel, we paid them $10, approximately £5 to take us to the motorhome company which was about 8 minutes’ drive away. After doing some necessary admin and watching a DVD on how to drive the motorhome and how it all works (kind of familiar to us already from previous hires) we set off from Auckland using our Sat Nav. Keef had loaded on both New Zealand, Australia and Singapore maps to our gadget back home saving some dosh in hiring the companies Sat Nav, good news.
We drove across the bridge over Auckland harbour and arrived in Orewa where we did our food shopping in the Countdown supermarket, we remembered from our 2007-8 Gap Year trip. We also unpacked our travel bags in their car park, so we had the van all straightened out for our fun times ahead.
We arrived at the Top 10 campsite in Orewa at midday and joined the club as members kiwi $49 which provided a $4 discount each night camping, roughly £2 so easily covered the cost of membership for the time we were in NZ.
The campsite and our pitch were fronting onto the beach, lovely blue seas, and skies and just a beautiful summers day with no humidity. We had steak and cheese pies & cobs for lunch. Frankly any kiwi pie is just fab , available from most service stations (servos) everywhere, put our British pies to shame.
We then walked along Orewa beach, beautiful views, and trees especially the Pohutukawa trees and Norfolk pines. A local woman (her parents lived in Grantham, small world) kindly took our photo on our camera for us, our trusty Canon Powershot G7 which we took down under in 2007-8, sadly by 2022 it was now defunct, and we have bought Annie a new one, I use my phone.
This local lady had been in New Zealand for 37 years, we noted she now had brown leathery skin, beach ready ha-ha. We had a long chat to her and then walked to the Vodaphone shop to sort out the internet and wi-fi for our trip, we purchased a dongle for the duration which worked well even in out of the way places. We also bought a kiwi phone SIM and topped it up with $20 at the New World Supermarket at the till.
We walked back to the campsite having seen the Waves hotel that we stayed at for Xmas 2007 with the boys when we were on our Gap Year. Phoenix joined us there for Boxing Day. See the HOLIDAY2007-8 site for more details at https://www.holiday2007-8.co.uk thanks for looking. It was a lovely motel just by the beach.
We noted all the lovely architect designed houses along the Orewa beach front as we strolled back, bare feet in the sand.
Dinner was beef escalope’s, new potatoes, salad, and an apple each for afters. It gets dark around 8.30-8.45 p.m. here , quite noisy with traffic during the day past the campsite which was on the edge of town but on its main through road, but very quiet at night.
Reckon we walked about 2 miles around Orewa today. The Britz campervan mileage at the start of our trip was recorded as 246,253 kilometers , recorded just so at the end of our time in New Zealand we can work out how far we had travelled. Clever, eh?
Friday February 8th 2013
Summary of the day, Orewa to Whangerei.
Cloudy start to the day but got sunnier and very blue skies again by 10 a.m. We left the site at Orewa for town and visited the Vodafone shop (again) to sort out the equipment for our netbook to view the internet and emails whilst we were travelling, yesterday eve had proved it didn’t quite work as suggested, typical. Took a while but eventually got it all working with their help. #Tick
We then set off from Orewa up the highway and along the coast using the famed twin coast discovery highway initially to Mangawhai Heads where we had lunch. Beautiful scenery, lovely homes, plus views along the coast and beach. We very much liked his place. Sadly, we saw lots of dead possums on the road, known as Kiwi pizza in NZ but protected in Australia.
We then drove to Waipu cove where we paddled and walked along the beach. Lots of small bits of seaweed in the sea so we decided not to swim, a seaweed bath despite costing a fortune at health spas was not for us today.
We then went to a lovely bay called Bream Bay with views of Hen & Chicken Islands. We then turned off the highway to Ruakaka where there was a stunning beach of soft fine sand and no seaweed and fab views along the bay. You could walk for miles along this beach. Keef got the chairs from the motorhome which was a Britz Mercedes automatic (love this model had them a few times) and we sat on the beach until 5.45 p.m. Then we drove to the Top 10 camp site at Whangerei (pronounced fangari) and arrived at 6.45 p.m. Annie did 2 lots of washing and Keef cooked a nice meal with wine. It got dark at 8.30 p.m. We had showers at the site to wash off the sea spray and beach sand and then Keef checked the emails. We booked 2 nights at the Whangerei Top 10 site so we could rediscover the area, we had been here before with the boys and phoenix in 2007-8.