The black part of the sand was magnetic! Really cool!

 

After a breakfast at our sea-view spot, we biked to Swanston, where we would take the train. Biking through Auckland would just be a big hassle, being a big city, and that usually doesn’t give much if you’re not going to stay there.

We had a few errands to check, and got ourselves a new fire steel, the last one still being in Paihia. Also checked a few other things, and ate vegan fast food at Pita Pit!

On the way to the bus station we saw a nice fire juggler, who we watched for a while, before buying tickets to get out of Auckland. We were supposed to go all the way to Pukekohe, but the trains stopped in Manukau today, so we didn’t have too much of a choice. I do think the trains were pretty cheap, though, and of good service!

Went we got off the train we asked around for a camping as we hadn’t found any through our phones. There really wasn’t any nearby, but we settled for a big park just five kilometres south-east, Totara Park. Being lazy, and also a bit cold in the rain, we ate out at a thai place, before going to the park and finding a pretty dark spot close to the toilets. Being a weekday it wasn’t any people there, and we figured it should be okay, as there were no signs telling us we couldn’t camp there. It was already dark, being close to nine. Apart from a stray dog it was quiet all night!

I actually looked at the playground the evening before, but it was too small to fit both of us…

The wind was blowing from north today as a change, which sucked, as we were going east to start with. We got to the coast pretty fast anyway, and had a nice lunch with a view over the sea. There were a few ducks and tons of seagulls around, who tried to snap every bit of grass we throw into the air. They also seemed to have some internal fights, but didn’t care too much about the other group.

After lunch we started going more in the south direction. That meant massive tailwinds!

With an average of about 25 km/h, we flew along the coast. Just 15 more kilometres and we would have to start getting east again, and there no more campings along the way, so we decided to stay in a small town named Kaiaua. We stopped at a small cafe-shopping place, where we bought dinner and breakfast, and also a bit of snacks. She had a wifi we could borrow, but we think she got tired of us, or that we may have used too many gigabytes, because suddenly the internet turned itself off. As we wasn’t done with our planning, we just hooked the telephone up to the computer instead.

All that done, and be biked the couple of hundred metres to the free camping area nearby. It was a nice view, even though we had a hard timing finding free drinking water, but a really nice couple who had visited their daughter had a 100-litre tank with nice water from Rotorua, and gave us as much as needed. Even topped us up the morning after before they left!