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The ride out of Kaitai was very scenic. John told us of a couple places to stop. Taking the “scenic tour” we had to cross a lake via a ferry. Further down the road we stopped a couple times to walk around the largest Kauri tree’s left. Nearly every one of the magnificent trees were cut, starting with early explorers like Captain cook who found them to be idea for use as a mast. These tree’s are estimated to be over 2,000 years old, it was difficult to translate the size of them through the pictures.
Approaching Auckland we had coffee at The Nature Café. A great spot to hang out, it was odd though as it wasn’t near anything. Our plan was to stay at another campsite but as we approached the outskirts of Auckland we found that all the campgrounds were full. In the end we slept in the car at a holiday park, not far from the car fair we were going in the morning.
We got into the fair around 8am which gave me time to do a once over on the windows. After spending a couple hours there it became clear we weren’t going
Landscape Along the Drive.
You can see the exposed sand dunes. The land in Northland is composed of sand dunes covered in six inches of soil!to sell it. I showed it to a dozen deals few of which showed any interest in the unknown import. “Saturn? Never heard of them”. It got real old real fast….
We decided to live it up for a night and got a hotel room. Went out and got a hair cut. While walking I noticed a organic pizza shop that we had to check out. Having our own room for the night was a treat enough, it was great to kick back and watch a good movie (We Own The Night). We stayed the night on the 8th floor. Emily made the note that it was weird to gain elevation so quickly having taken the elevator instead of walking up.
I started the next day early following up on a couple dealers who were interested in the car. Nobody followed through including the original place I bought the car from. I hit up a bunch of dealers while Emily checked out some book stores. It was pretty frustrating, but I did find some more some more dealers that were interested, all of them insisted on having a day to do their homework on it. After a few
hours of that I had had enough and decided it was time for something fun, like riding a motorcycle.
Our original plan was to buy a motorcycle to get around. It would have worked out with the open country roads and beautiful weather we had. It proved to be twice as expensive and had some obvious disadvantages. I found a shop that rented them out and took it for a test drive. This BMW 1200GS was a VERY fast machine. Taking it around the block a few times I felt like it would take some getting used to. When Emily got on that back of it I didn’t have the confidence I did on my own it pained me but I had to pass this opportunity up. We decided to use the unsellable Saturn to drive around the Coromandel Peninsula.
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