Sunday 18th February
A decadent Sunday. An
unusually slow start, with a plan for brunch at a local restaurant. Wendy decided to walk there, a 5km walk
through leafy suburbs and mostly quiet streets. She got too excited by the food
and forgot to photograph the event.
Oops. On the way back home we had
a tour of the oldest part of Auckland with its grand buildings and big gardens
and the schools where Andreis and Vanessa teach.
We dropped Andreis back at home, picked up our hire car and
headed to the airport to return it.
Vanessa followed in her car to pick us up. After chasing around for a fuel station that
functioned we dropped the car with no drama at all. Vanessa
then drove us to the port where we caught the 40min ferry to Waiheke Island.
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| Historic Ferry Building |
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| Ferry building amongst modern Auckland |
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| Auckland from the ferry |
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| Brown Island on the way to Waiheke |
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| Approaching Waiheke |
Our friend Ruthy invited us to visit Waiheke, “Stay with me”
she said. That was about 6 months ago..
then her daughter…and later her son unexpectedly moved back home, filling her
small house to the brim!! Then our dates
didn’t match and she isn’t even on the island until tomorrow night! What she did do for us though was get us
mates rates at a local AirBnb, arranged for a friend, Dean, to pick us up at
the ferry and gave us her car to drive!!.
Waiheke is a tourist mecca for Auckland residents and other
visitors. In high season 20,000 people
arrive by ferry daily, most of them returning the same day. Not us of course! The island has lots of small coves and
beaches and being the same latitude as Sydney, is a great temperature. The other huge attraction is a collection of
vineyards and wineries. Since Ruthy is
wine tour guide, we’ll be doing that when she gets back!
We did a bit of a drive around, got a bit lost and purchased
some food supplies. Wendy headed out on
a 6km walk mostly through bush to a lookout.
Looking at a sign instead of the track she rolled her ankle and while
limping back home encountered an off leash, unaccompanied dog. That got the
heart rate going...all went OK thankfully. She now is sitting with the foot up with a
cold stubby of cider on the ankle!
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| Little Oneroa beach |
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| The harbour from a walking trail |
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| taking care of the foot!! |
Our AirBnb is rather basic, with only a microwave for
cooking. A gourmet mountain of nachos
was the night’s dinner.
Monday 19th February
We spent the morning tootling around the west end of the
island having a look at the views and sourcing fabulous bread for lunch and a
smoked salmon and leek pie for dinner. Along the way the Red Cross Op Shop provided a
new shirt and two art galleries had great exhibitions.
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| Sculpture in a park |
The fuel gauge on the car was plummeting somewhat so we
headed for a petrol station. Not easy to
find, but we managed. On flipping open
the lid we discovered that we weren’t actually travelling in a hybrid car, but
a fully electric one. You’d have thought
we might have noticed the lack of sound!!!
We’d received no instructions on how to charge the car, so after asking
a few questions and finding the charging cable in the boot, we headed off to a
charging station near our house. Not
only was it fully occupied, but the plugs provided were incompatible with our
cables. Hmmm. Our house was up a hill, about 30m from the
car and the cable was clearly labelled with “DONOT use an extension lead” Where does one find a 3 pin plug? We had the address of the owner, Ruthy, so
drove there, only to not be able to figure out which house was actually
hers. We snooped around the 3
possibilities and no one was responding at any of them! A message to Ruthy evoked no response, so
back to her friend Dean. He came to the
rescue, taking the car away and plugging it in, bringing it back about 3 hours
later with enough power for us to have a run around tomorrow.
Lois, our host, offered to drop us somewhere for the
afternoon, but we decided to stay put.
Wendy rested her foot and we caught up on all sorts of correspondence. A handle on the door of our cottage had
fallen off yesterday, so Lois went and bought new screws and Wendy packed the
holes with matchsticks, allowing the new screws to attach the handle
effectively. Simple task, but Lois was
most impressed!!
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| Fixing the door handle |
Late in the afternoon Ruthy rang to say there was yet
another disaster. She was stuck in
Napier because of plane mechanical difficulties, so she wouldn’t be arriving
tonight and picking us up for a tour tomorrow morning!!!
When the fire siren went off about 6pm we thought there was
yet another fire chasing us. We still
don’t know what happened, but we saw nothing and no one was running anywhere!!
Rick had sourced a smoked salmon and leek pie which was the
basis for another great dinner.
Tuesday 20th February
Just as we were having breakfast a huge cloud moved in and
dumped heavy rain on us. Quite uncalled
for! The sky did clear and with a still
strapped but pretty pain free ankle, we headed off on a short walk along the
coast. With our eyes closely monitoring
the power level in the car, we journeyed along the north coast of the island
having a look at quite a few beaches, stopping for coffee at Onetangi.
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| Great tree on the beach |
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| Black sand cove |
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| Another black sand cove |
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| Oneroa beach |
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| Rick with our great little EV |
We found a gentle walk into a wetland with manucas and tree ferns. Everywhere we walk there are traps for feral animals. Here are 2 different traps close together.
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Traps for feral animals
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| Wetland |
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| Manucas and ferns |
We lunched back at the house and Ruthy and Dean picked us up
and took us on a tour of the east end of the island. What a stark contrast with the tourist buzz
of Oneroa. Quite rural with dirt roads,
lots of vineyards, olive groves and a few sheep. We stopped at Man of War winery at the far
end of the island. They were all booked
out for wine tastings so we just had to settle on a glass. The best Pinot Gris I’ve ever tasted…by a
mile. The glass full did cost more than
what we usually pay for a bottle though!!
The setting was exquisite. Right
on the beach, sun shining, wind protected, views of yachts and islands…
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| Sipping on wine |
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| East most beach on Waiheke |
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| Looking east to islands and the Coromandel Peninsular |
The tour continued along the coast and up to various great
view points. It really is a beautiful
island, but make sure you have a very fat wallet if you plan to visit!! We actually dined out on this our last night. Excellent Thai food on a balcony overlooking
the ocean.
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