After 3 days in the rain, yesterday we finally woke up to a sunny sky. Just as we’re about to leave the country… but it did make our trip southbound on the west coast a lot more pleasant. The west coast of Northland is called the “kauri coast” and that’s because there’s a number of forests here with kauri’s, ranging from the very small and young to huge and ancient – the biggest one having a diameter of more than 4 m and an estimated age of 2000 years. Impressive! The range of accommodation on the west coast was less impressive so we ended up in a slightly dingy but cheap motel in Wellsford. (There’s nothing there at all, but they call it “the town you can’t miss” because it lies on an intersection of highways).
This morning we drove the remaining 100 km to Auckland, amazingly found a centrally located hotel on the 3rd try, and spent the rest of the day in the city. The local Skytower is claimed to be the tallest tower in the southern hemisphere, but the highest viewing platform is “only” at 220m and the remaining 100 m or so are nothing but antennas. Still, nice view. We discovered some other parts of town that we did not see last week (notably a very nice shopping area) so now our opinion of the city is a lot more positive than it was then. And no, of course we did not buy anything because we already have far more baggage than we’re allowed to take on board for free… let’s see if we can persuade LAN to give us a break tomorrow. On the other hand, we’re flying at 5:45 so I may not have the energy to discuss the matter at all and simply pay whatever ridiculous amount they choose to charge us for the excess baggage…
