I was awoken during the night by my first ever earthquake! I initially thought was a train like in Blenheim but I quickly realised was a real earthquake as there were no train lines nearby. The shaking seemed to get stronger and I was about to get out of bed and stand in a doorway when it started to die away. The TV news in the morning confirmed that it had been a magnitude 8 earthquake although as I was 500 miles away from the epicentre it felt a lot less strong. In the morning when I asked my friends about it they said that they hadn’t felt a thing! Presumably the campervan’s suspension had dampened the vibrations.
We gave the campervan a thorough spring cleaning before returning it to the depot at Queenstown airport. Actually, we couldn’t find the depot and eventually parked in a lay-by while Jason ran into the airport building to try to find Maui’s desk. He quickly returned saying that the chap there had told him to bring our campervan right up to the airport and leave it there. We offloaded all our stuff and waited while the man quickly checked the van over. We then checked into our flight back up to Auckland leaving us a couple of hours to kill.
Queenstown airport isn’t large and thus doesn’t have the bustle of Heathrow or even Auckland. I bought the Christmas and New Year’s edition of The Economist and sat and read it in a comfy chair. We had a coffee in a café overlooking the runway before our flight was called. It was an uneventful flight up to Auckland.
After landing we headed to the hire car desk but it was unattended so we joined the scrum around the luggage carousel. Of course, by the time we had got our bags the desk was still unattended but now there was a queue in front of it. Eventually a chap turned up and we finally got our car.
We headed to the Takapuna Motor Lodge in Auckland’s northern suburbs where we had booked a two bedroom apartment. This was a nice place to stay and our apartment was quiet as it was set well back from the busy road the lodge is on, not far from SH1.
After unpacking we drove to my friend’s sisters house. Unfortunately she and her family were out so we headed back to Takapuna. On the way we stopped at a Chinese takeaway as we didn’t feel like cooking. A word of warning, New Zealand takeaway portions are large!