We spent the next two days walking around Auckland. After we settled into the hostel and had a nap, we tried to find a three-story bar called the Civic. Our guidebook said it had a Scottish bar in the basement, an Irish bar on the ground floor, and an English bar up top. By the time we got there it was around 9:30 pm Tuesday nite. We wanted to start with the Scots and work our way up, but the Scots were closed. So we went into the very low-key Irish bar for a drink. Later we mounted the stairs to the English, but alas, they weren't serving. I've never seen a bar that stops serving at 10 p.m.

The whole place seemed very British. The Union Jack is still a prominent part of the NZ flag, and the Queen is on the $20 bill. (right now, NZ$1 fetches about 62 cents U.S.). "Hot bread" shops serve up mince and mutton pies. Knitting and garden shops are big. People say things like "Righty-O, Good as Gold, and Isn't it Lovely?" to mean good-bye. England features prominently in the World News section of the NZ Herald.

For the next two days we ran errands--brought our bikes to Cycle Action for repairs, found inet cafes, bought maps, etc. Eric sold his Flashman book for $2.

The hilight of all this was Cycle Action. The owner, Frank, was a bicycle racer for NZ in the 1984 Olympics. But he wasn't at all snobby. He totally fixed our bikes and set us up with some much needed brakes and tires. He even found a broken shifter cable on Eric's bike. The cable wasn't quite broken but was badly frayed. If Frank hadn't caught it, we probably would have gotten stranded somewhere.

Frank also gave us some helpful advice on how to get out of Auckland on a bike (go west instead of north or south). He warned us that Kiwis are bad drivers around bikes (so far, I don't think this is true, but Eric tends to side with Frank).

We didn't leave Auckland til midday Thursday Oct. 23. The road was a bit difficult. We rode on a combination of bike paths and sidewalks and parking lots and highways to get out of town.

On the way, we met some Canadian bike tourists, Bill and Laurie. They're ski resort designers from Whistler, British Columbia, and it was their first day touring. Since the wind was blowing at 30 knots (several yachts got smashed that week during a race, because the winds were so stiff), and the hills were rolling, we were all in a bit of pain. Laurie was a little nervous about the traffic. And we were all still getting used to riding on the left hand side of the road. We talked for quite awhile, and then Eric and I went on.

We all met again later that night at our first campsite, Parakai. It was a little pricey (NZ$24, or about US$16), but it was total luxury. It had a huge kitchen, a hot water heater (read: instant tea), AND a jacuzzi! There was hardly anyone else there so we got the jacuzzi to ourselves. It felt awesome after the long ride. It also felt strangely luxurious. That was camping?

The next three days went much the same. Friday we rode 90k to Maungawhai beach, Saturday we rode 65k to Whangarei (pronounced Fong-er-ay), and Sunday we rode 77k to Paihia, a resort town in the Bay of Islands.

Three things were totally amazing. First, the sheep. When you land in the airport they give you a little fact sheet that says, among other things, that the ratio of sheep to people is 13:1. But seeing them is another thing. We saw lots and lots and lots of sheep.

Second, the campground kitchens were all marvelous. They had many electric burners, multiple sinks, and most of them had "zip" machines, or hot water heaters. Eric was so excited that he started buying eggs and english muffins on the way into camp, so he could cook us up a feast in the morning. We have hardly eaten out at all here.

Third, the winds are vicious! Although they have since calmed down, we had pretty stiff winds those first several days. Many times I was almost blown into traffic. Or a semi-truck would come by and create a little vacuum that would suck us first to the left (away from traffic) and then to the right. I learned to get real nervous around trucks.

Unfortunately, Friday-Sunday was also a major holiday weekend: NZ Labor Day. That meant lots of extra traffic on the road, and many many bodies in the campgrounds. (The one drawback of the campground is that there are no segregated tent sites--it's usually just a free-for-all on a lawn ringed by motor homes).

We loved Maungawhai, though we didn't linger at the beach. Whangerei was also neat, but strangely empty for a town of 40,000 (when we walked into town at nite no one was out and about--apparently they were all at a rugby match).

Whangarei was the only place we had something stolen from us: some fellow campers stole our juice out of the community fridge. We were both really pissed. Still, we feasted on eggs and english muffins.

Paihia was a bit odd. It's supposed to be one of the most touristy towns in NZ, right along with Rotorua, a volcano tourist hotspot south of Auckland. We didn't intend to camp there, but we did because we were too exhausted to go further--especially since the last 3k into Paihia were brutally hilly, like California's hiway 1.

It's totally cruel to have all those hills at the end of a day. To make the distances I play these mind games with myself. Like I figure 9k is less than a roundtrip bike ride from our old apartment to the beach. So once we have 9k to go I start getting really excited. When we got down to 3k, I was thinking we were just about there. Then these huge hills came up and killed us. To give you an idea of how steep and windy it was, we saw a sign that said: Drive Slow, this road takes Loved Ones.

next: Joan's birthday.

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