Strawberries, Croissants and Ferry Crossings

About 7.00 Daniel declared it was time for breakfast,  so that's why Monday really starts here. He had a box of croissants and some jars of crushed strawberries - better than jam! Along with many cups of tea and a coffee, and joined by Alya, we managed to eat some more, while making plans for Monday. Easily persuaded in the blur of super-exhausted wakefulness, we were heading for Devonport, a ferry ride across from mainland Auckland to a quieter, more tranquil suburb. 

But first - the showers! I can't believe how good a shower can feel - I just wanted to stand under the hot water for, if not the rest of my life, then a very long time. But Daniel was waiting to give us a ride downtown on the way to work, so just  a quick one, new t-shirt, shorts, empty and refill the rucksack with day stuff, and it's into the Suby for the ride. 

Leaving D in the rented hotel company car park, we walked down Queen Street. Looks pretty much like a city, warm air, some sun, slight haze… A stop to get a phone SIM, a bit more cash and other supplies, and we walk all the way down to the ferry terminal. The Devonport is just leaving! Looking back you can see the older buildings dwarfed by the glass cliffs of the modern temples, and their stucco is much warmer and more attractive. Other touristy travellers chat with us, the ice broken by their taking our joint picture - nice to get one! The bay opens out to reveal the NZ navy base, a frigate being tugged somewhere, and the massive container port, with the island up towards the sun. 

The ferry dock is like an old London Bridge, or the market bridge in Venice, lots of little shops selling various non-useful items e.g. Segway rentals, boxes of Nat Geog, but it's quaint enough. We walk up towards Mount Victoria, one of the two pointy hilled and hopefully ex-volcanoes, past a nursery where kids are playing noisily. 

The most astonishing thing is the sound of the crickets - their enormous, all encompassing IMAX scale trilling doesn't really upset me but I'd hate to have to sleep with it. I managed to listen carefully enough to find one very close, and take its picture before it changes location. As we round the mount, so its bulk comes between us and Auckland, the traffic noise slips away to almost nothing, enhancing the picturesque individualistic houses of the area. This is a good holiday already, even if our flip-flops are proving a bit difficult to walk uphill in! 

Walking down the road, instead of the grassy path, I'm pondering the effectiveness of the concealed cannon, feeling that if you were going to scare the Russians off, you'd be better off advertising your armament a bit more obviously. But since they didn't invade I guess it worked… Did they??

We buy a french stick and some fruit for lunch in the old Automatic Telephone Exchange and  the somewhat less salubrious Fruit N Veg shop, planning to eat them on one of the beaches to the east. It's quite a walk and the sun is hot, we don't get any further than Torpedo Bay. The gulls are very polite, hanging back to judge our waste rate, before giving up to check the foreshore for quality snacks. Dark clouds form over the smaller mount, and way across towards the Pacific side, huge dark clouds are clearly depositing rain somewhere. Maybe we should walk back…

We're strolling slowly along, saving our feet, probably for a rainy day, when who should overtake us but Kiwi Stephen!! I call "Steve" (sorry!) and he turns, not recognising us at first, not least because of the strange context. After having got us straight, we swap stories , and I'm quietly amazed about the coincidence that he should just happen to walk past us 12,000 miles from home, if only 0.5 mile from his parent's house!

We end up sitting outside a cafe, drinking various caffeine-based derivatives and talking about Stephen's plans, where we might go, and what we're going to do together this afternoon. Then, at almost the same moment, Jen and I turn to each other and declare it's time to head back - neither of us want to get stuck really tired and suffering from sore feet when we've just hit the no-sleep jet-lag wall. And coffee doesn't help! We leave Stephen at the the ferry quay internet cafe (his parents' broadband is down today) and jump on the boat.

Taxi or bus? We have the bus instructions… why not? More of a sense of personal control… It's not hard, Alya gave us the numbers, and the Chinese driver is pretty reassuring, so $3.20 later and we're accompanying numerous Chinese students and a small family of Mum with two kids and a smelly-nappied baby past Auckland Uni towards Sandringham Road - the curiously royal-residenced roads are strangely twee-sounding, but look more like Canada or other big-boned countries than the UK. But I misjudge the stop, we get off one too early, and Jen's feet are pretty worn out by the time we get back to number 83. Mine too!! 

Alya arrives back to find me typing this with Jen asleep, feet freshly washed. She's revived by a cup of tea and Daniel's arrival, and we now look forward to eating snapper caught yesterday by the man. Yeah, good! Daniel's done well, leaks in a cream sauce, rice, nice salad, tasty snapper... and then the "signature dish", a term I can't pronounce any more after several glasses of wine and port, orange segments flambed with orange liqueur with vanilla ice cream. Time for bed. Night night. Pity it's hot and I haven't opened the windows enough...