Yesterday was our buffer day in Auckland. A chance to recover from the red-eye flight and ground ourselves in New Zealand before picking up the RV today and heading out to the main event – our road trip through North Island.

We had originally planned to spend a few hours in the Auckland War Memorial Musuem. It’s supposed to be fabulous – history, culture, natural history…. a great way to get some context for everything we hope to see in the next few weeks. But (in what is starting to feel like a recurring theme for me) the museum is closed both days we’re here… so we had to re-group. If you’re ever able to make it there, will you let me know how it is?

So on our first afternoon here, we decided to take a meander through the city instead, and ended up visiting a local bookstore and cafe named Chuffed. Chuffed provided a much-needed, strong cup of coffee for Tim and me and a delicious lunch to fuel us through our red-eye fatigue. Then we wandered over to the All Blacks experience. We figured that if we couldn’t get the full museum experience, then we may as well try to figure out rugby. We had a lot of fun, but we still have a lot to figure out about rugby.

Yesterday had us taking a ferry across the harbor to Devonport. I wanted to pick up a few supplies for our travel journals, and found the only retailer that sells Traveler’s Factory supplies in all of New Zealand there. Plus it offered a chance to take a ferry and get a good view of Auckland from across the water.

The store was lovely, with a kind proprietress, all the supplies we needed, and with the bonus of a friendly store dog named Chester, who was happy to accept lots of pets from the kids.

The other advantage of Devonport is that it offered a chance to hike up to the top of a dormant volcano, and the site of an old Māori fort and the cannon emplacements from the Victorian era. The view from the top was beautiful – both back toward Auckland and out toward all the islands in the bay.

Auckland has something like 53 dormant volcanoes and the cityscape is blanketed over all the hills left behind. You can count on any particular walk between two points to be hilly. If we had been able to go to the Auckland museum, I probably would have been able to share about the cultural and spiritual significance of those dormant volcanoes, but I suppose we’ll just have to speculate instead…

In the afternoon, we walked through another well-known, charming neighborhood, Ponsonby, and tried some recommended ice cream from Duck Island Ice Cream. By this point, we had been having success after success with delectable meal after delectable meal, so all the walking we’d been doing was merely a survival technique to buffer us between meals.

This morning the kids are still sleeping. Soon we’ll gather up our bags and head out to pick up the RV. Amelia has been videoing all our activities to share with Roxy when we get back home. She’s been vibrating with excitement about picking up the RV. She and Duke have a list of games to play and activities to do while we’re in the RV.