By Ruth

Today was a rest day but we were very busy with various errands and social engagements.

First I had to take the bus to a neighborhood on the other side of the city to pick up my contact lenses which I had mailed to myself from Paihia (Day 13). Only certain post offices here provide the service of holding your mail for you until you’re ready to pick it up, so I had to send it to the post office in Orakei. I am using daily contact lenses so there are quite a few of them, and it was nice to get NZ Post to carry them here for me.

Afterwards I headed to Newmarket, the neighbourhood with all the outdoors shops. Elliot met me there. I won’t recount every stop we made on this expedition but suffice it to say we visited 5 different shops, some of them multiple times. We bought a few new items but also replaced a bunch of things that had gotten broken or worn out over the course of the last month.

For example, Elliot replaced his shoes with a new pair of the very same shoes. So clean and shiny!

In the afternoon we got together with some friends from the trail to have a goodbye coffee with Stephen and to meet his wife Caroline, about whom we had heard lots over the course of our time together. We first met Stephen in Kaitaia (Day 6)! We will definitely miss our cool trail uncle, even if he sneakily managed to get us to walk more roads than we would have otherwise.

Here are Stephen and Elliot on our last day walking together.

Afterwards we went out for dinner at a vegan Thai restaurant we had really enjoyed on our last stay in Auckland exactly one month ago. It was delicious.

As Elliot wrote yesterday, it is strange being back in Auckland. It feels like our voyage has come full circle, and yet we are not even a fifth of the way through! I hope once we walk out of here on Thursday morning the feeling will start to fade.