DAY 2
Week 1
AUCKLAND (Auckland, NZL) to PAIHAI (Northland, NZL)
Sunday April 15th, 2018
TODAYS MILEAGE – 174 miles or 280 kilometres
TRIP MILEAGE – 2,299 miles or 3,700 kilometres
Our plane made fairly good time in landing in Auckland around 11:15 p.m. at which time it took only around 30 minutes to clear Customs & Immigration. While waiting for the ‘Three Musketeers’ to arrive, I took the opportunity to secure our rental vehicle from Hertz NZ. Unfortunately, even though we had specifically ordered a Kia Carnival, we ended up with the considerably smaller Toyota Previa.
Once ET, Trina & Josie were sorted, we loaded up the 'loser cruiser' and headed over to the Ibis Budget Auckland Airport just outside of the airport. A relatively simple task in getting over there was hampered somewhat but not knowing where the hotel was. This facilitated a lap around the airport cargo area before arriving at about 1:15 AM local time.
We had booked a family room for Sharon, Josie & me and on arrival, we come to find out that Ibis’s family room consists of a queen-size bed with a bunk bed, somewhat secured at 90° above the headboard. It’d be fair to say that this bizarre arrangement was a large topic of conversation and much laughter, while we settled in for what was left of the night.
I was up at around 4:30 AM decided to go down and familiarise myself with the rental vehicle before everyone else got up. As the sun rose, I completed a full walkaround of the vehicle in broad daylight only to find numerous scratches, dents, and gravel rash all over the front of the van. Tony came down to take a look as well and we made the decision to return the vehicle back to Hertz for them to inspect it and make note of the damage.
On our way back to the rental station, we both felt that we should have got the vehicle that we booked i.e. the Kia Carnival and will see if we could get what we actually paid for. We spoke to the car hire team member and after a bit of to-ing & fro-ing, some gentle persuasion and a measure of humour, we were be able to solicit a replacement vehicle in around half an hour. Fair dinkum, you would have thought she was giving up her first born, but in the end, while they were washing the replacement vehicle, Tony and I headed back to the hotel, collected all our luggage and the rest of the group, then returned to complete the vehicle swap in around half an hour.
Just when we thought it would be an in & out deal with exchanging vehicles, the rental station team member I pay an 'excess' mileage fee for the Previa, based on the ending mileage reading of 5,129 kilometres. It took some convincing, including a Google Maps route image and the intervention of her manager, to have the fee waived when explaining to her that we had the vehicle less than 6 hours and it would have been physically & mechanically impossible to complete 4-5 laps of the entire country in such a time frame.
We headed north up the M1 motorway, accompanied by intermittent rain showers, pulling up for a later breakfast at a new shopping centre in the town of Silverdale. From there it was up through Whangarei, where we stopped to load up on some groceries, purchase an esky and load it with adult beverages. We had to detour through Pakaraka to get into our Air B&B accommodations in Paihai.
It didn’t take us long to get settled into the 4 bedroom/4 bath upper floor house, that overlooks the Bay of Islands. After a bit of a natter with the homeowner, we were able to garner a recommendation to the local restaurant - Charlotte’s kitchen, which was only a short 10-minute walk into town. Before you could knock over a G&T, we were dining oceanside and had a brilliant meal.
• PAIHAI ~ Air B&B (Northland, NZL)