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Auckland, Rangitoto and the end of the holiday

Miranda

A few relaxed days followed: from the northern tip of Coromandel first via Thames to Miranda, to a campsite with hot springs, and then along the coast via Clevedon (wonderful ice cream there; in New Zealand there is “real fruit ice” in many places, where fresh berries or kiwi fruit are puréed and pressed into cream ice) to a suburb of Auckland: Manukau.

Manukau was quite a good base for the next days, and I organised the journey home quite efficiently: 12 noon at the campsite, check in, pitch the tent, ride about 3 km by bike to an industrial estate in Manukau, spot a bike shop, ask briefly about a bike box, after the friendly statement “help yourself, we have plenty of those boxes”, grab a box from the company Specialized (made in China), push my bike together with the box back the 3 km to the campsite in partly strong wind, and arrive there at 1:30 pm... :)

In the afternoon I also organised a few banana crates to stiffen the already once flattened bike box with correspondingly sturdy cardboard corners, as well as 50 m of duct tape.

The next 3 days I spent on excursions to Auckland, to the island of Rangitoto and on a short bike ride along the coast to the northeast of Manukau. A bus stops directly in front of the campsite and takes you to the centre of Auckland without changing. Cycling through all the industrial estates and suburbs of Auckland would not be much fun.

The campsite works with a reliable taxi company: a short call to a free 0800 number and you are driven to the airport for a fixed price ($30, about 17 euros), if necessary in a minibus because of the bike box. So now, after the practical advertising break on Auckland :)

Auckland

Auckland has about 1.4 million inhabitants, is built on many hills and has numerous volcanoes within the city area. Auckland certainly has nice corners, cafés, a harbour; I read up a little on the history of the America’s Cup there, and there are many parks, a big museum that I visited and some islands worth seeing offshore.

I visited Rangitoto, a volcanic island that came into being a good 600 years ago, with a diameter of a good 5 km, and the volcanic cone is still about 250 m high, which was quite an eruption back then. Besides the nice view of Auckland there are also some lava caves to visit.

I flew back to Munich in the evening with an Airbus A380 via Sydney (stopover) and Dubai (change) to Munich.

So much for New Zealand - hic sunt leones.