Mark Smalley

Tuesday, 22 Mar - Auckland
Leave Paihia at 0800 heading for Auckland, tanking up for $34 and 26 l at 2026 km and stopping briefly to see the world famous toilets at Kawakawa - well worth the non-functional visit - and to chat to an old guy driving an older Ford, I'd guess '20's or '30's. We mail the Skyway Lodge motel on the way, where we stayed on our first night, and they have a $55 room with shared facilities not ensuite but we take it anyway.
At 1200 and at 2248 km we're in Devonport, north of Auckland but with easy parking and a $9 return ferry to shuttle us in 10 min to central Auckland. Walk up Queen St to Karangahape Rd or K-Rd as it's called here. Queen St could be any city, whereas K-Rd has it's own flavour with a good ethnic mix.
Buy a couple of extra video tapes at $13 each; I already can't bear to even think of editing 7 hours of holiday video but it's got to be done. Hope we can reduce it to 1 hour. We'll be pushing on 1000 photo's as well.
It was misty this morning but disappeared after we go over a ridge and it's a sunny day, maybe 23c.
We walk to the Sky Tower and save $18 each by not going up the 190 m to the observation deck. We do see some people jumping off from this level through, guided by wires and taking 16 second at about 75 kph.
Drop in at a souvenir shop we passed on the way up Queen St where a very amusing Japanese girl helps us. She's very interested in my T-shirt, which has something in Japanese written on it that she can't make out so she asks a Japanese customer (there are a lot of Japanese here) to help her. I gather it's something to do with a Japanese baseball "prayer" who apparently went crazy. She gives us extra discount on the stuff and even shakes hands with us, making we suspect that we bought a bit too much.
Albert Park on a hill offers a short rest before we set of back to the ferry back to Devonport at 1630.
Tank up for the last time with 15 l for $18 at 2268 km and at 1800 and 2281 km we're at Skyway Lodge.

We splash out $53 on an Indian meal tonight: Goan fish curry, lamb in a spinach sauce, mixed veg and 2 beers. Very tasty.

A bit of bookkeeping to finish off the day: by paying the last 124+34+105+18+53=$334 by credit card we're down to our last $67 of the $800 we withdrew.
Other credit card expenses amounted to 737+420=$1157, so that's $2291 for 13 days, of which:
- 867 was lodging for 11 days (2 days at friends)
- 420 car rental + 184 petrol (the car's done just more than 15 km/l)
- 820 food and other costs
That's 1238 euro or 95/day (Brisbane 92 euro, Bangkok 88).

posted by Mark Smalley @ 5:14 PM