Our plan had been to ride straight to Auckland as quickly as possible, to get rid of that bouncing battleship, as long as it still remained in one part. However, Judy Fentress got us to change our mind, and visit Kiwi House in Otorohanga. So we rode 40 kilometers back south, and saw the Kiwi bird and some of its friends. So far we hadn't seen a Kiwi bird, So the Kiwi house was really worth a visit, and addtional 80 kilometers didn't feel bad at all. We tried to ride the rest 200 kilometers without stops, but our butts got so sore, that we had to stop once just before Auckland. So we had a break, with a length of a hot dog.

In Auckland we found the Holeshot's quite easily. The welcome was as cold as when we first came for the bike. The guy didn't find the papers I signed, nor my empty Visa receipt for possible insurance payment. However he found my passport. For paying the returned part of the cancelled insurance, he finally found enough cash in small bills from their cash to pay me. Otherwise I should have had some kind of bank account in NZ, I guess, to get my money. The guy in Holeshot's sounded like he would rather have had the money from insurance back instead of 6000 km older bike.

For service I gave him a list of all the faults we had found in the bike. I tried to go the list through, what we had experienced, but he ripped the list from my hand saying, that his service people can read. As you can guess they were too busy to get us back downtown Auckland with our luggage. They told us that, nah, the taxi takes only ten dollars from Takapuna to Auckland. We agreed to get the taxi. It cost 16 dollars.

We took our luggage to Auckland City YHA, and took a walk around the city. We even found a photo shop, where the girl promised to develop all our nine rolls of film before they close at seven.

Later in the evening we met Doug again. He also invited Mark Bodell to sit with us into some pub. Mark is a crazy guy. He is almost fifty, but looks and acts like twenty years younger. He rides Ducati Monster. We went to a pub, where we had a couple of Creamy Ales. From that pub we went to another that has it's own brewery. There we ate some chips, and tasted the restaurant's own Draught. We had fun chatting about NZ, Finland, and our trip, and of course having yet another beer. Elina started to get tired, and Mark also told that it is quite late, so we left, and had very brief farewell: "Seeya later mate!". NZ people never say "goodbye", they always say "seeya", or "later".

We ordered the Shuttle Taxi for next morning in front of the YHA at 6:15, so we went straight to bed. Later I found out, that the surprisingly early loss of Mark's fighting spirit was caused by a sudden stomach complaint. For two days he couldn't keep even water in his stomach. Only a spoon-bait with triple hooks would have stayed there after swallowing. We believed Mark, since Elina had same kind of symptoms after we returned home.

The Shuttle came for us in time. In the airport we tried to buy some souvenir T-shirts, but didn't find any interesting enough. At least we bought some kiwifruit filled chocolates, and kiwifruit wine. The plane took us back to the crowded Tokyo. It was like waking up from a beautiful dream to the cold reality.