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Published: January 25th 2010
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Looking cute is thirsty work Sweet as ay!
3 words to describe Natalie apart from the above are “crash bang and wallop”, what an amazingly friendly and funny gal!!
We arrived in Auckland about midday hoping to be met by Natalie. We had been communicating via email after being introduced by a shared friend at Hearing Dogs UK. We had never met before and neither of us knew what to expect. Nath and I only knew the colour of her car and Natalie had only seen a picture of me from face book. It wasn’t difficult for us to find her though as we turned around to see a car screeching round the corner and pulling up at the bus stop. From that point on our lives had changed forever and for the better as we finally met the whirl wind that is Natalie Denton! (or Nat for short)
We pilled our bags (just about) into the boot, made our introductions and within seconds were chatting away like old friends. Nat started showing us around the streets of Auckland, where we got our first taste of kiwi driving, going at such speed that I could only just focus on the roads themselves (safe
but fast as hell you are Nat). Having realised we wanted to go straight to the backpacker campervan market (try saying that when you’re drunk) Nat did an amazing daredevil u-turn in the road and headed straight back to the road we had just left -turns out the campervan market was just up the road from where we’d arrived -doh!!
I’d read about the backpacker campervan market from my rough guide and figured there’d be loads of choice there and we‘d easily find a van or car for a cheap price….not ruddy likely!! Whilst the cars were at good price, the campers were all well over our budget, the cheapest going for about 9k (£4k)!!! Not to be put off we were hopeful we had plenty of time and the market was bound to change each day as people came and went. So we headed back to Nats house to chill out and meet the bear!!
Poppy bear is Nat’s beautiful doggy (and not a bear as I had feared, well you never know what weird pets people have in foreign countries). A larger than life girl whose enthusiasm could take your legs out from under you but
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Me and Miss Denton with the cutest wrinkly face - not to mention how lovely Poppy was (he he he sorry Nat couldn’t resist). Poppy greeted us with her usual scary “get out of here or I’ll eat you” face and vocals, but they soon melted away to reveal a excited smiley brown mass that tumbled into both of us, before deciding that Nathan was her new favourite. With the crutch sniffing all over (told you these kiwis were weird) we settled in with a much needed cup of tea and chatted for ages about New Zealand people, and of course Hearing Dogs UK and NZ alike. Nat used to work at the UK centre so we knew a lot of the same people, so it was like a proper little mothers meeting with a lot of “no ways” and “sweet as” (which thanks to Nat is our new favourite saying). Nath found Nat hilarious but I think the statement that really finished him off was about a lady’s hairy lip “you think she’d have shaved the old mo before having her picture taken wouldn’t ya!!” - Nath was on the floor.
Before we knew it most of the day had gone by
so Nat started preparing dinner - she is a great cook. On our travels round NZ we had learnt that learning to cook properly (not the way we do by putting stuff in the oven or pouring a ready made sauce on) is something all kiwi’s do naturally, so the dinner Nat made seem to take no effort and tasted wonderful!! We settled down for the evening, beer in hand, with Nat having an early night from all the excitement of new guests. With a great first day over our plan was to spend the next few days looking round at campervans, determined to have one sorted (well I was) before we headed to New Plymouth.
The next day was a slight disappointment to wake up to - torrential rain!! The weather in Auckland was so unpredictable with some days full of bright sunshine and others where it didn’t stop raining, everyone we spoke to quoted a different month for when summer was meant to really start, we didn’t care when as long as it did!! With the days being fairly unsuccessful on the campervan and weather front but the evening full of good food, funny as hell company
and lots of wine the week started to fly past. We decided that as we were due to Hearing Dogs soon we should really go and see some of Auckland and the Northlands rather than get bogged down with our bad luck on the camper front.
In the end we spent one sunny day in Auckland, I bough underwear from a shop were the assistant thanked me for paying as most people were just stealing from the table at the front of the shop because she was running the shop on her own. ( If I’d have known that I’d have done the same! He he he). Overall we weren’t that impressed with Auckland, having seen so many cities in the USA, we didn’t find anything spectacular about it, plus it didn’t help having rubbish weather - even the picturesque marina wasn’t looking its best in this light. Auckland has a tall tower at its centre called the Sky dome, but again having scaled nearly all the tall buildings in America we decided we could miss this one out and save the $25 charge.
On shopping in one of the many outdoor camping shops, we bumped into a
guy handing out flyers for campervan sales. How uncanny we thought; is this fate? as he pointed out where the yard was in relation to us and that they definitely had the sort of thing we were looking for. Well after a long trek up to the yard (Auckland is very hilly) we found a car lot with a portacabin on it which was passing as an office, house, general store and toilet. Turned out the guys here were buying any old van and putting a mattress in it with some basic camping equipment and then charging you a huge price. This type of van is known as a “sleeper van” over here and is quite popular with travellers but we wanted a little more comfort and convenience by having a proper camper van with a fridge at least!!
It obviously wasn’t the sign we thought it was and our van hunt would continue on…..
Next day we waved good bye to Nat and Poppy on another rainy morning and made our way on good old public transport to the city centre or CBD as everyone loves to refer to it, to catch our Naked bus to Northlands. On
the bus into Auckland I managed to get chatting to a deaf lady who I’d noticed get on earlier. I only noticed because the bus driver had moaned at her for not holding her hand out early enough or something to hail the bus and the woman just signed that she was deaf so didn’t know what they were moaning about, which basically shut the driver up. I had been nervous about how much signing I had forgotten and what I would need when I got to hearing dogs, but minus a few confused moments and a couple of different signs, we chatted the whole way into town. The lady was so lovely she even helped us find where our connecting bus was picking us up from for our trip to the Northlands………..
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