30 Oct. Te Araroa 29
Early start this morning with packing up the tent while it was still dark and then spent an hour over in the kitchen charging up our batteries and having breakfast at the camp site just north of Auckland. As we walked along the beach heading towards Auckland, we watch the sunrise to our left while admiring the mansions and houses that belong to the very rich that overlooked the beach.
Passed many marathon runners and road blocks along the way to the ferry terminal to get us to Auckland CBD.
Our timing couldn’t have been better as I’m sure the ferry waited for us as we walked quickly down the path towards the waiting ferry.
side wouldn’t have been a problem.
I had thought we wouldn’t have made it to Auckland until something like midday but at 9am here we are sitting in the ferry doing the 30 minute crossing. Being a Sunday we knew there wouldn’t have been much happening in town and we didn’t have any real desire to hang about Auckland long, just long enough to have a second breakfast for the day at McDonald’s and a couple of coffees while Eunhwa updated her blog and I sent a few messages on facebook.
The official trail takes you walking to the international airport along the city road, and as we have been walking the city roads for the last couple of days. It wasn’t a pleasant thought of repeating this for the next few days, so after reading the map and looking at points where the train line intersects the trail, we came to agreement that a train ride out of Auckland would be the best.
Manurewa station was out drop off point which had a large New World supermarket for our resupply and a camp site just a couple of kms walk from there.
We did our shopping, and I was surprised at the amount of Indians that lived in the area. The area wasn’t a wealthy area in fact it looked like that there were many council Houses to help the disadvantage. We carried on for another 2km up the road to the holiday park and according to our GPS, the point on the maps said that there should be a camp ground very nearby. As we stoped and studied the map, a passer by stopped and told us that it had closed long ago. Being late in the afternoon and no other options for a place to camp, we found the entrance of the camping ground and sure enough it was closed. We entered anyway and everything was there including the kitchen with lights working. We setup camp for the night and went over to the kitchen to do our cooking. The kitchen is now being used as a office for the construction workers as files for their safety procedures and sign in books were in the filing cabinet. Being a Sunday and no one about, we were happy to stay here the night,
The campsite was sold off to get redeveloped as resident properties and already I could see access roads were getting built. Luckily for us, the majority of the camp site was untouched with the power sites still there with their poles for power supply.
Our plan we to take advantage of the abandoned campsite and call it home for the night or until someone come along and tells us to move along, which being a Sunday, was very unlikely.
So now poor old Eunhwa as a little paranoid of every sound or person that came into the campsite thinking we would get kicked out, sure enough there were a few vehicles entering the site probable thinking the same us as that there should be a campsite here and a couple of people walking their dogs. But no one bothered us and except for the feeling of camping at a closed campsite, it was a pleasant place to call home for the night.
We cooked a descent feed that tonight with Eunhwa’s steak filling the whole pan and then all the vegetable, we used the kitchen as it was protected from the cold evening wind but keeping the lights off so that we wouldn’t draw attention to ourselves, the bathroom and showers were still working but not very clean. At first we had decided to camp in the kitchen itself but through better not just in case someone came along and told us to move along, where as being camped out