Thursday, April 4: Cool and somewhat cloudy in Whangarei, sunny in Auckland
Jocelyn’s (airbnb, $62.7)
All packed up quite neatly after breakfast, which was not as populated today as it had been two days ago. The instant coffee still seemed to have an admixture of coffee grounds in it though, but the orange juice and mild could be finished before the journey began.
I left @ 8:40 and it took only a couple of minutes to get to the Hub. Had the podcasts playing away on the ipod and hope to make a dent on the backlog. Barbara turned up shortly after me, and just after 9:00 the bus was already there, and so could make a longer break. I raced up to the top to claim a front seat, and we pushed off at pretty much on the dot of 9:15. this is an “express” service, meaning: Stops along the way, but no break in Kaiwaka. Traffic flow was fairly good until we reached a critical point just before Warkworth. After that Auckland was not far. A couple of rainbows made an appearance along the way.
And what a sight it is, coming into town over the harbour bridge on a sunny day with one peak of green among the skyscrapers and sailing masts.
With all my stuff loaded up I set off zigzagging through the blocks to get to the bus stop for the suburban bus. Was a little surprised that I had already made it by 12:15, but got on the bus, tagged on with my ATHop card and eagerly awaited the trip. Was able to identify the stop I had to get out at and tagged off again.
One Asian woman also got out at my stop and after a few steps she asked me whether I was her guest and we greeted each other. Jocelyn had just come from her work as an accountant and my plan had been to sit out on the front porch until she had arrived or hide my luggage somewhere out the back and perhaps go out to lunch until she turned up.
Anyway I was now installed in the house and had to get wifi to see what Rayna was up to. Several attempts at trying to identify the password had to be made until something was successful and there was a message from her, but nothing else for the rest of the day.
Bought some ham and apples from the supermarket for lunch, then chatted quite extensively with Jocelyn. She had plans to go hiking at the weekend through a meetup group and I suspected that the Stephen who was leading the group was the same chap from 2013. Her daughter L. returned from school and a dentist’s appointment, and wanted the lesson on speciation which we were well into when said Stephen turned up to give her a driving lesson.
I started to construct the train journey home. Deutsche Bahn seems really to have bottomed out on this, giving times of up to four hours, some of which is due to the major construction on the bridge over Königsstr. But only some. EFA gave me much better results (thirty minutes less for the journey all the way home), including a sensational one-change-only into the #124 bus in Laatzen. Will try reserving seats on three consecutive trains tomorrow.
Time was getting on, and no news from Rayna, so went down to the beach & eventually settled for a pizza capricciosa at the Oak Barrel for $24 plus $8 for a BRB Golden Lager on tap (55 Tamaki Drive). The place one door further down had a really cheap takeaway menu on display and inside the pizzas were $10 more expensive, so I left after being served water. Oak Barrel’s pizza was firm rather than crispy, but at least the knife could be used as a cutting instrument.
On the way back stopped in at the supermarket for milk, OJ and coke, and noticed that they had an extensive food court, the Eatery, which I may well choose for a burger tomorrow night, if it can be cooked all the way through.
