I don’t know about you but I could do with a break from virus related talk. I know it’s important to talk this stuff through, but after nearly a month of being in lockdown it’s time for a distraction. So here’s a little story from a holiday we had last year.
Since arriving in New Zealand we’d talked about heading up to the cape - as far north as you can travel in New Zealand without getting your feet wet. But, even starting from Auckand it’s no mean feat. You’ve got to really want to go. It’s not the distance, although it’s far enough especially for a long weekend, it’s the roads. They aren’t all that and definitely weren’t built with efficient travelling in mind. They’re mostly single carriageway for the 400km trip with lots of bends and one-way bridges to contend with. Add to that several bottlenecks in the form of scattered townships and you have the ingredients for a fairly testy journey. You see although Northland is not that populated, being the Winterless NorthTM it’s a popular spot for Aucklanders so traffic can be a nightmare. And that’s just getting out of Auckland. By the time the platoon gets to Warkworth, the first town on the way up, huge queues are inevitable.
There is, of course, always the option to take the route up ninety mile beach but it’s not a whole lot quicker and, being a beach, you’d better time it right. Might be a tad tricky if the tides not out - get it wrong and it’ll put a real damper on your weekend.
I’ll be honest, this is all a lengthy preamble to try and excuse the fact that after nearly five years of talking about it, we finally plucked up the courage to head to the cape. Except we flew. I know, embarrassing really. I think it stems from a particularly horrendous journey back in the UK many years ago when it took us nine hours to get home from Cornwall. Up until then, I didn’t even know it was possible to travel for so long in the UK. Surely it wasn’t long enough?
Anyway, I digress, so last summer with a long weekend we ditched the car at Auckland airport and flew up a far as we could. It did seem counterintuitive to drive south when we should’ve been heading north, but it would be worth it. In fact, the 45 minute drive to the airport was just a little shorter than the flight and would’ve been a lot quicker had it not been Friday night.
In fact there was hardly anytime for the crew to sit down after the briefing when we started to make our descent into Kerikeri. It’s a shame there wasn’t an inflight service - not because I was desperate for a glass of wine but because I was looking forward to seeing how quickly the cabin crew could serve it and tidy up again. I’d imagined they’d have to do most of it running. Anyway I was denied that spectacle and didn’t even get a decent view because we hardly gained any height. In fact, I’m pretty sure that the pilot didn’t even need to use any navigation equipment and instead just followed SH1 up the country. Probably had a road map in the glove box.
We landed, and after a very short taxi back along the runway we picked up our bags off the tarmac, sorted out the hire car and we’re on our way.
There isn’t much in the way of facilities at the cape so our chosen base for the long weekend was Mangonui. Not only was this close enough to the top of the peninsula to make it a sensible starting point, it also boasted that it had the best fish and chips in New Zealand. How could we not stay here?
It was quite late when we finally rolled into the small hotel’s car park but we were relatively fresh as the journey couldn’t have been any easier. We left the luggage in the boot and went into the reception.
“Ahh, you must be Graeme?” the owner asked as we opened the sliding door into the small office. Without waiting for an answer he added “Thought so because you’re the last of my bookings to arrive! It’s okay, I’m not a mind reader. Just let get your room details.”
And with that he disappeared into a small room to one side, no doubt chuckling to himself about his cutting wit. To pass the time I started looking at a map of Northland that hung on the wall, partly to get my bearings but mainly to check out the location of the world famous famous fish and chip shop. World famous in New Zealand anyway.
“Have you driven far today?” He was back and was motioning towards the map on the wall that I was now studying with great interest.
“Oh, no. Just from the local airport,” I answered, pointing vaguely in the direction of Kerikeri on the map.
“Oh, so you’ve just arrived?” he enquired with some surprise.
“Yes, we landed and came straight here. Not had time for much else really.”
“Wow, you must be exhausted. Glad you didn’t fall asleep at the wheel. So how long are you staying?” he asked as the questioning continued.
“Oh, we’re just for the weekend and then we fly home.” I replied, thinking it wasn’t that far but starting to wonder if it’s been a harder week than I imagined. Maybe I looked more tired than I felt.
“Straight back?” he asked, “you’re not stopping off anywhere on the way home?”
“Errr, no we’re back in work next week,” I replied, wondering where on earth he thought we should stop off on a 40 minute flight back to Auckland.
“Well you are keen I must say!” he exclaimed looking genuinely surprised, “Wouldn’t have thought it was worth the effort though!”
Well this was a bit much I thought to myself. You really would think he’d have a bit more of a positive attitude toward the area than that. Especially when you’re in the hospitality business. Hardly encouraging.
“Well if you’re not too jet-lagged, I could arrange a trip to the cape for you tomorrow. Weather‘a supposed to be nice!”
Jet-lagged? What was the loon talking about? The flight was so short we hardly got off the ground........ahh and then the penny began to drop....
“At least you’ll get to see a little bit of New Zealand before you head home,” he added and in doing so confirmed my suspicion.
“Oh sorry,” I said, although not quite sure why I was apologising, “but we live in Auckland.”
“Really. You sound British.....”
There really was no answer to that and so I just smiled and made a mental note that I wasn’t in Auckland anymore and would have to get used to people thinking I’m on holiday. Which of course I was but not in the way they thought. No wonder he looked surprised. Who on earth would fly from the UK to rural New Zealand for the weekend?
Thankfully the trip was a huge success. Cape Reinga was worth ever ounce of effort, the beaches were golden and practically empty, the late January weather prefect. And yes, the fish and chips were every bit as good as they said they were.
Beautiful!
ReplyDelete