Auckland---the Mighty Deuce

Marita3
Mark & Helen Syrett
Thu 11 Dec 2014 00:22
We left the hotel on Monday morning to pick up the Mighty Deuce (MD) which is to be our home for the next two months—our boat on wheels.
The yard was full of motor homes of all shapes and sizes being returned, repaired as necessary and sent out again——they looked comfortable and spacious.

Having checked in our MD was brought round from the rear of the yard—“Mighty” suddenly seemed to be a misnomer! Perhaps Tom was right when he warned us several weeks before we left that we had booked a converted Transit van.
The “M” might stand for Mercedes but it certainly did not stand for ‘big”. Briefly she has a drivers seat and a passenger seat, cooker (gas) with 2 rings only, heads including shower, seating area with table which becomes a double bed at night. We threw everything in and said we would stow later. A quick handover and we were off to the nearest supermarket to provision——that was all thrown in the back as well. 
We set off for the Coromandel peninsula with Mark at the helm and Helen navigating. When we were still in suburbs of Auckland after an hour it became obvious that we needed help. Unfortunately at the fuel station the cashier was an Asian and he could not understand Mark and Mark could not understand him. Finally we found a chap who gave us very clear directions and we broke free of the stranglehold of the suburbs and set off East aided by our pocket size hand held hikers Garmin GPS——at least we now knew we were going in vaguely the right direction. 
With everything flying around in the back we decided to stop and stow properly. It was then that the MD became a bit larger with lockers, pockets and under seat lockers discovered so the contents of our rather large suitcases and bags disappeared and the provisions into the fridge etc.
Those that followed our previous exploits know that batteries featured highly and regularly in the blog—you will be pleased to know that we again have two batteries and a battery monitor and a “shore power” connection when we are on a powered site. So far no problems to report but we do turn the fridge down at night to save power!
Meanwhile the countryside became more and more beautiful as we wound our way up and down and round and round the roads/lanes. Lovely undulating grassland, gracious trees and healthy cattle——it looked like a vast English parkland.
The MD purred on and we eventually arrived at Cooks Bay where we found a spot on the edge of the bay to stop for the night. Nobody else around possibly because, as we found out in the morning, motorhomes were not meant to park there overnight as it was deemed a “public place". There were two or three other motorhomes in a field around the corner where “freedom” camping (i.e. without power facilities etc) was allowed—that is where we should have been!
Captain Cook careened the Endeavour at Cooks Bay and together with his astronomer, Charles Green, was also able to fix his position with accuracy as the planet Mercury passed over the face of the sun on 9 November 1769.
The achievements of Captain Cook never cease to amaze us!
Cooks Bay was one of those places that had no great merit other than that it was next to a lovely beach and had obviously acquired a cult image rather like Rock in Cornwall or Abersoch in Wales. Large sums of money had been spent converting what were chalets, some still remain, into houses of mostly stunning (but some not so good) architectural design. Sotheby’s International Estate agency even had an office in the village which comprised a food store, a builders merchant and two estate agencies. All of this in a very remote place but crucially within two hours of Auckland. Values seems to range from about 800k NZ dollars (£400k) to 1.6 million NZ dollars (£800k) for those houses on the front row i.e. beachside. 
As darkness fell we decide to set up the bed—this is probably more easily achieved before rather than after a bottle of Sauvignon. We will get better with practice--- we have over fifty nights ahead in which to practise the art of setting up and dismantling the bed. We slept well!