05 Nov: Washed out of the country

"This weather," Marian said, "is a disgrace."

Our last full day opened under low dark cloud. The only planned activities were to look at shorebirds from two places around the Firth of Thames, a major shore-bird hangout.

We had a dry hour at the first stop, seeing nothing much but godwits. Godwits have a great story to tell—they migrate annually between here and the Yukon River delta in Alaska, check that on your globe for a trip—but we had seen them before on this trip.

Then as we started around the foot of the Firth the rain began and it continued to rain, steadily and sometimes heavily, the rest of the day. No vistas, no color. At the second stop, the Miranda Shorebird Center, we tried to walk out to their shore hide. This involved a long trek across open pastures. Our shoes got soaked, our pants were sticking to our legs, and somehow we lost the trail and ended up back on the highway. Our only view of the birds were of happy godwits feeding in the far distance. As we pulled away, Marian stuck the camera out the van window and took our only picture of the day.

Declaring that a bust we headed for the Manukau Top Ten Holiday Park, a place we had stayed once before (21 Sept, "Back to Auckland"), driving through increasingly busy (but equally wet) Auckland suburbs

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Determined not to let our last day dribble out completely, we booked a table at an upscale restaurant in downtown Auckland. After showers and tidying up, we took a taxi downtown for a nice meal overlooking the harbor. (The two taxi rides did a nice job of using up most of our remaining NZ currency.) It was Guy Falks night and we could see fireworks displays going off across the water. In fact when we got back to the van around 9:30, there were fireworks going off in the backyards of the houses ajoining the holiday park. These are definitely not "safe and sane" fireworks, either, but big fountains and candles that shoot 50 feet in the air and explode loudly.

We figured, OK, New Zealand doesn't want to make us feel bad about leaving, so it gives us a miserable last day, but at least... fireworks for a send-off.

What's Next?

If time permits we may post a progress note from the Auckland airport Friday afternoon after we check in. Then, next week, we'll post a few follow-up notes, general impressions of camper-vanning around New Zealand. Eventually we will reorganize and expand the number of pictures in the Smugmug gallery. So keep the RSS link in your browser. This blog is not quite dead yet.