Bye Bye New Zealand

Well, the time has come (or nearly). Its Friday afternoon and, in a little while we’ll be setting off from Robyn and Murray’s to our final campsite in Auckland ready to get up early(ish) tomorrow morning to catch our 12:40 flight to Sydney. We’re packed and just about ready and we’re quite (very) sad to be leaving as we’ve had a great time here. Jackie’s already making plans to come again and I’d be quite interested in a repeat trip sometime (but not for 6 months as our standard visa doesn’t allow it).

Watching the sunrise from our bed

We left the campsite at Little Waihi yesterday morning after catching another glorious sunrise, this one somewhat easier than the one we had from East Cape lighthouse as we didn’t even have to get out of bed! We’d parked the van so the back window looked straight out to the Pacific and, as that’s the way we slept in the van, we had only to lift the curtain and look out of the back window. When the best time arrived we just flicked open the back door, which hinges upwards, lay on our fronts in bed and watched it all happen, camera in hand.

After our goodbye’s to George and Judy in the caravan next door we set off back to the DaVinci clinic to have the dressing changed on my hand, it’s all good except for a very slight infection due to an ingrowing hair, which was sorted out, and I’d had the results from the biopsies taken on the day of the operation to say they are happy everything nasty has been completely removed so, other than the stress of having the stitches out next Tuesday somewhere in Sydney, I’m OK and ready for anything!

The sunrise and smoking white island

Our dinner at Robyn and Murray’s went well, Jackie did an excellent fish pie, I made a lime and mascarpone cheesecake and the whole thing was washed down by some excellent wine.

Ah well, better finish here as Jackie’s telling me we need to go to get to Auckland in plenty of time so, thank you Robyn and Murray and all the other people who we have met and see you in Sydney….