15June06 Joan and Wayland

15June06 Thursday

This morning after failing to figure out a way to copy a feature video from a local television station that featured the Panoho family we said our goodbyes and headed on down to Auckland.  Hwy 1 is starting to be a little familiar as we passed through Warkworth, Orewa, Waipu, the Goat Island turnoff, Hwy 12 turnoff, etc.

We camped our last night at the Takapuna Holiday Park on the Takapuna Beach.  We walked a couple of blocks up town and ate at the Stonegrill.  Interesting place where you cook your food at your table on super heated stone blocks.  Joan had a sea food mix and I had a steak.  If you didn’t cook the food the way you like it’s your own darn fault.

 

Friday morning we had a beautiful sunrise over the Pacific and then during the morning while we were packing we watched a container ship come into the Auckland bay and also a couple other cargo ships come in.  There was a good sized twin mast sailboat sail out of the harbor.  We headed out to the KEA depot about 1:30PM and they had a driver take us to the airport.

 

We met up with Nancy and returned her suitcase to her that we had been holding until she got back from Australia.  Later we met with Donna the NZ GV team coordinator and returned the Habitat cell phone.  It was nice to see her again and thank her for all her help.  We eventually got checked through customs and met up with Roger and Marlayne who had just arrived from Cairns, Australia about an hour earlier.  It was good to see those team members once again and hear about their adventures in Australia.

 

We all took off on the 7:45PM Air New Zealand flight to Los Angeles.  A cool thing that Air New Zealand has put on their 747 that we rode on was a new entertainment system.  The system allowed each passenger to select from about 40 or 50 different movies, travel movies, or other types of video based entertainment.  You can play any one at any time, start, stop, pause, resume, etc.  Very cool.

 

Pictures include some of Dave and Anne Reyburn and Joan and I, a few of their house with one showing a rainbow directly over their house.