Friday, January 30, 2009

Friday 30th January- Picked up the car

There are lots to do today. We have to go to Kaitaia to collect our hire car and also go to a shop called ‘The Warehouse’ to pick up some stuff and also change some Travellers Cheque for cash now that the pound has strengthened a bit.
The sun is shining today and quite warm and we needed to visit the recycling centre on the way to Kaitaia to drop off our rubbish so as to leave the house clean and tidy.
The car was ready when we arrived, it’s a Mitsubishi 3.5 litre Diamante four door saloon, and as usual with Japanese ,cars loaded with gizmos and all for about £13.00 per day, quite cheap really. Mind you the car is six years old and has done about 50000 miles. But we don’t care as it’s big enough for all our camping stuff and, most important, cheap.
There is a new road section on the way in to Auckland and it saves a lot of time, see earlier Blog on payment difficulties, anyway we have been able to buy online our two trips on this Toll road and hopefully avoid the queues of people waiting to pay. It was quite easy really.
We have just about finished cleaning the house and packing the car when 5 pm arrived and so, providing we get up early we should be able to leave by latest by nine am
We have a Hotel booked in Hamilton which is about 250 miles from here and then intend to go to the cinema and see the film called ‘Australia’ which has a good write up for the scenery.
So that we can pack up the car fully including the laptop we are writing this Blog early and whatever we write now we must do later to ensure accuracy. We are planning to pick up some Fish and Chips for four people and then go to Robin and Lorraine for dinner and also to wish them a fond farewell.
Over the next five or so weeks we shall be travelling quite a bit and the update of this Blog may be a bit slow sometimes and is very much dependant on the availability of an internet connection.
So we are off from Taipa after three months, where the Hell did the time go??