Our first day in New Zealand

(Half Moon Bay, New Zealand, 6th of January 2017)

As we fell asleep very early yesterday after a long and tiring trip from Sweden, we woke up already at 04.30 in the morning. But luckily, the Ibishotel we stayed in was serving breakfast already from 5.30 in the morning so that was no problem. Johan assembled the second bike and after donating our bicycle cartons to a nice cleaning lady we packed our stuff together to get out on the roads. Since we are going to ride our bikes all the time in New Zealand we have packed a minimum of things, a total of just over 10 kilos in addition to the valuables we keep in a bag in front of the bar. For example, we have minimal clothes with us like; one pair of pants, two sweaters, one pair of shorts etc. The only thing we have got a lot of is training clothes, bicycle accessories, tools and electrical gadgets.

This first day we had planned a very short trip to test if everything works properly with bags and bikes. The target was Half Moon Bay, 25 km east of the airport. It was a pleasant trip, mainly through some rugged residential areas in the outskirts of Auckland. The sun showed up and the temperature was around 23 degrees. Many small hills up and down but so much to look at that you hardly noticed them. Strange enough, we got associations with US villas when we cycled through the outskirts

After a few hours, and various minor trackingmistakes, we arrived at a small sleepy town consisting of a marina with leisure boats and a few restaurants and shops. We had booked a room at Half Moon Bay Motel, a place right on the water with barracks decorated as small apartments. We got an apartment with kitchen, living room and bedroom. It was indeed big and reasonably well-equipped but also very downturned and choppy. We started to luxury our lives with a lunch at a Thai restaurant overlooking the harbor.

We spent the afternoon in Auckland when we discovered that a ferry departed directly from Half Moon Bay into the center of Auckland. We had no direct plans with our visit to the city, and only strolled around the streets. We bought a sharp knife, something we did not dare to pack with us on our journey to Australia. Auckland is a very fresh city with many nice shops, but traveling with bicycle bags does not get much room for shopping – the things you buy you also have to carry up the mountains as well. We stopped by the Auckland sky tower, a tower that people visit to watch the view, walk a cloud walk on a narrow plateau tied up in a rope or simply get hoisted down along a wire from the tower. We did not do it but enjoyed watching others who played the wild games.

For supper we had spaghetti with tomato sauce, bacon and olives with accompanying salad, cooked in our eminent kitchen.
/ Christel