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Published: January 24th 2011
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Day 101
15th December
Waking up in our lovely campsite, I cooked up a breakfast feast of fried eggs, toast, baked beans and coffee, excellent start to the day! We took our time packing the van back up and when we were ready we walked down to the dive shop to hire some snorkelling gear. I wasn’t too sure whether I was going to snorkel but I hired gear anyway just in case. That done, we jumped back in the van and drove down to Gemstone Bay. We were going to walk, but as we had to be in Auckland that afternoon we decided to save ourselves the time and drive. The car park was full, but fortunately the guy running it decided that our little campervan qualified us to park in one of the caravan spots, result! One German couple got very annoyed at the lack of spaces and didn’t seem to appreciate the guys suggestion that they park further down the road and walk up!
So feeling a little smug we grabbed our gear and walked the 15 minutes down the cliffs to the cove. The beach is made up of huge rocks, not sand so it
took me a little while to pick my way through them but we eventually settled on a rock and Ellory got all his snorkelling gear on. I was quite happy chilling out on my rock, although I did go in for a little dip later, not for long though, the water was bloody freezing! Ellory though, was as happy as larry swimming around and looking at all the trigger fish that were swimming around him. He was in there for a while until jellyfish started to show up and he decided maybe it was time to get out! It was a lovely morning though and it was warm and sunny so I was quite happy watching Ellory swim around!
However we soon had to get going, it was about 2 hours drive back to Auckland so we wanted to get going. We dropped the snorkelling gear back at the shop and hit the road. We stopped for some excellent fish and chips at this random roadside restaurant on the way back, it was great, everything was decorated with England and royal memorabilia, there were Charles and Diana wedding plates and everything! Very retro.
We arrived back in Auckland
around 4.30pm and called Ella to let her know we were nearly there. She came out to meet us and direct us to where we could park the van. It was so great to see her again, 3 months is a long time for either of us not to see any family members! We had a lovely evening, Ella was staying with friends and they very kindly welcomed these two scruffy, slightly smelly strangers into their home (well we did bring beer and wine!) and we spent a couple of hours hanging out on the balcony with an amazing view over Auckland, drinking beer and catching up. To our surprise, they had made us dinner! Delicious fajitas which we thoroughly enjoyed, we have been taken aback and pleased by the hospitality shown to us by complete strangers, it was a lovely evening. All of us also went to an art exhibition by an artist who was a friend of the family Ella was staying with and we went for a drink afterwards. They also very kindly allowed us to park our campervan at the back of their flat so we didn’t have to worry about finding somewhere to park for
the night! Like I said, fantastic hospitality and it made our evening with Ella really special. We’re looking forward to seeing you when we’re back in the UK missus!
Love Liz xxx
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