Month: January 2019

25 degrees, Sunny

Called home after breakfast to be given the very sad news that our lovely Doogie died on the 28th (UK time).  Can’t say how upsetting this is for everyone.  He appeared to be in good health when we left after a nasty scare in late November, so we were hopeful that he would still be around on our return.  Unfortunately he took a turn for the worse and we had to let him go.  Devastated that we couldn’t be there with him but thankfully Peter and Dad were.  This is how we’ll remember him, mucky and pleased with himself and very chilled

So feeling very low we took the ferry over to Devonport on the other side of the bay to our hotel.  Again a very pleasant town with lovely housing and public places but a bit short on things to see!  Climbed the North Head lookout point and saw the Disappearing Gun and tunnels (a cannon that recoiled into the ground – never fired in anger though). Not much else to see other than the site where a family were murdered in the late 19th Century and where their murderer was hung – that’s scraping the barrel a bit for a tourist sight.

View of Auckland from Devonport

Spent the rest of the day quietly in our room.

24 degrees, partly cloudy

Left Paihia in the morning heading towards Auckland, stopping at Whangerei  for coffee on the way.  Another nice town with pleasant harbour area.  Arrived in Auckland at about 3 pm and found our hotel fairly easily.  We’re in the Grand Millennium in the central business district.  Whilst we haven’t exactly been slumming it in our hotels this far, this particular hotel is particularly nice.  Somehow, no idea how, we are in a Club Room which gives us entry to the club lounge with free drinks and food between 5 & 7pm each night – essentially an evening meal for free which is brilliant for our budget!

We dropped the car off at about 4 pm having covered 4000 kilometres in the last 20 days.  Another piece of good fortune as the hire company volunteered to waive the $80 fee for returning the car a couple of hours late – never thought Avis had it in them – so two great results today.

After dinner we went for a walk around Auckland to the harbour front  and it appears to be a typically tidy, clean New Zealand city.

26 degrees, sunny

Took a drive up to the Northland Peninsular today to see 90 mile beach (really only about 90km, but that’s still pretty long).  The journey to the tip of New Zealand at Cape Reinga would have taken about 3 hours so we decided just to go a quarter of the way up the road and get onto the beach just to get an idea of it’s size.  On the way Mrs Crow was navigating so we took a right turn too early (only by about 24km!) and ended driving up the KariKari Peninsular but didn’t realise we were driving the wrong peninsular until we run out of road!

Eventually reached the correct road and drove to the beach which was very impressive,  90 kilometres of hard packed sand and dunes.

After a picnic in the dunes we drove over to the other side of the peninsular where the scenery was completely different with protected inlets with stunning blues and greens in the water

Getting a bit low on fuel on the way home, but didn’t pass a single fuel station until we reached the station next door to our apartment block with 11km left in the tank according to the gauge!