Sunday February 9, 2014

I felt as if we were holding ‘Court’ this morning.  We were the centre of attention as we were preparing to leave the camp site.  Lots of questions about where we had been, where we were going, and lots of questions about the bicycles and the amount of gear we were carrying.

We usually wake up with the sunrise and often are getting ready for bed at sunset.  I have noticed over the past couple of weeks that the hours of daylight is getting shorter.  It is getting light now at 7:00 am and dark around 8:30pm.  It is noticeably the tail-end of the New Zealand summer, although the weather is very hot.  It is a little like our August in Canada, you can sense the change in the season, but really do not want to admit the summer is almost over.

We were given advice on the best way to Pukekohe.  Follow SH 1 until you get to Pokeno (there is a Sunday market there), then take the back road through Tuakua to Pukekohe.   We were not told that part of SH1 becomes an Expressway – a divided highway.  A divided highway with a cycle lane!!

Sunday on the Expressway, was not very busy.

We had not managed to get hold of Matt’s Gran-in-law, so we were unsure whether we would stay the night with her in Pukekohe or carry on to Auckland.  As it happened as we were cycling along SH1 Chris and Kath spotted us and stopped.  They were on their way to Napier and would not be in Pukekohe.  Again the generosity of Kiwis became apparent when Kath offered up her house for us to stay the night, she gave us a key and told us we could stay a couple of nights if we wished.  Kelly my nephew’s wife was in Pukekohe/Auckland for a couple of days as well.  Chris texted her and told her we were on the way.  She was waiting for us when we arrived.  It was lovely to see her, we had a quick chat with her before she had to leave to go back to Auckland.

We stopped for lunch at the Pokeno market and had a little wander around. To get to Pukekohe from the market, Ralf checked the route on his garmin and it had us going north of the highway and then down into Pukekohe.  We had a little discussion about relying on the garmin or following locals directions.  On this occasion we followed the locals direction and admittedly it added about 8 ks to the route, but it was a nice scenic route!  This area is a farming area but primarily vegetables – lots of potatoes, onions and carrots.

We were only going to spend overnight in Pukekohe but decided to take another rest day before heading back to Auckland on Tuesday.

We have realized that we are very close to the end of our stay in New Zealand.  We are ahead of schedule because we didn’t do the west coast of the South Island.  We will spend the next 2 weeks with Chris (Matt’s father-in-law) that will give us lots of time to sort through things, what we need to keep, what we may send back to Canada.  More importantly we have to clean the bikes and all of our equipment.  Australia is quite strict about not importing any bio-hazards and as we have been camping for the last two and a half months we need to make sure the camping equipment is very clean.