Month: April 2018

52. Auckland – Skeptics in the Pub

Monday, April 3: A little cloudy and changeable, quite hot in the afternoon sun; heavy rain predicted for the evening

Walking: 22.3 km

Tracy’s

Tracy had to get up early for work and by the time I was awake I could hear the garage door go up and the car start. Day for a real shave today, and then breakfast of the last of Tracy’s eggs, three breakfast sausages, all on toast, OJ, about ⅓ of the yoghurt, and coffee. Had a brief look on the net, but really wanted to get walking to Pak’n’save to see what their vegemite costs.

As I walked along Glenfield Rd couldn’t really identify where Archer Road left and continued on to the Glenfield Shopping Center and beyond before turning back and finding a bit of a map in the public library, and made my way back and eventually found the turnoff. Nice views of Rangitoto and downtown all the way. Reached the supermarket, but their price ($6.39) was more than I had in mind from New World, so I returned empty handed. As the whole trip had taken much more time than originally planned, and a bus was due in a couple of minutes, I waited for it to take me back to the Highbury shops. Read more…

51. Auckland

Sunday, April 2: Variable during the day with some showers in the evening

Walking: 12.4 km

Tracy’s

The computer had worked its way through two folders quite successfully and needed to reboot to get into winter time. I was up @ 7:30 after a little bit of a lie in and went down to cook one egg and a trio of sausages for breakfast in a titanium nowo pan that appeared to be invincible. Coffee had half condensed, half fresh milk in it, and with butter used liberally on the toast those two leftovers from the tramping kitchen may well be finished by Wednesday.

I secured the use of a garden hose and the deck with Tracy’s permission to spray my tent down with and it dried for a short while on the deck until the drizzle appeared to want to last longer, then I hung everything up in the garage. Tracy had left after a short time to attend a baby shower and I was left to my own devices, mainly putting together the new panorama (Blumine Island) and chatting with Rayna. Read more…

50. Nelson – Auckland

Saturday, April 1: Nelson: Overcast
Auckland: Fine & warm with some high clouds

Walking: 8.1 km

Tracy’s (airbnb, $50)

Perhaps the last wakening at 7:30 summer time. Breakfast was the remainder of the crumpets with vegemite, some coffee with milk out of Genie’s fridge, and then the work of packing had to be done. Almost everything fit into where it should and Genie’s scales gave a reading of just under 20 kg for the suitcase (with more clothes to be discarded) and just over 7 for the backpack. Everything was checked and double-checked, the flat locked up and the keys in their hiding place, and I was on the street waiting for the Super Shuttle with 30 minutes to spare. The only thing that didn’t seem to work out was deleting played podcasts from the ipod (impossible; the podcasts have to be deleted from the master list first and then the ipod has to be synced, which might have triggered World War 3, i.e. the loss of all of the old podcasts that would then have to be downloaded again). Listening to the podcasts out on the street it occurred to me that having the pocket knife and the scissors in the backpack was probably not such a good idea, even if security at Nelson was going to be fairly laid back, so those were transferred to the suitcase without much of a problem. Read more…

49. Picton – Nelson

Friday, March 31: Some remnants of cloud in the hills in Picton, becoming sunny and rather warm

Genie’s

The hostel was rather quiet last night with very few guests; at around 4:00 when I got up to go to the loo, one of Nikki’s bread machines was making a lot of noise and she was up, too, to turn it off so that it didn’t wake any other guests. Regular waking was around 7:30, and breakfast was three of the crumpets that I had bought last night with vegemite, coffee, and grape juice from Nikki. I was chatting with the American, Dave, who was also leaving on the midday bus.

I was out of my room @ 10:00 and proceeded to check the internet for anything I had forgotten yesterday. Itunes took up a lot of time and the result on the ipod was less than satisfactory but it will have to do for the trip. I saw that the university sports centre back in Hannover now had a sea kayaking group (Tuesday evenings, so finding time for swimming practice will be a bit of a challenge) instead of flatwater paddling, so I guess that is what I will have to take. Around 12:00 Dave turned up from wherever it was he had been & we loaded up our backpacks and headed for the ferry terminal. Read more…

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