Back to North Island..

We landed back in Auckland at 7pm on Monday the 7th March and Rob picked us up and took us back "home" to Snell Beach. It really did feel like coming home and it was good to see both Rob and Julie again and we settled down with a few glasses of red to recount tales of our trip down south. Rob and Jullie were both working on Tuesday and we had a relaxing day "at home". I walked down to the shopping centre, had an iced coffee and watched the world go by before buying in some things for our evening meal. On Wednesday Rob and I went to Te Atatu and had a chat with Jodi before taking Jonny and going over to Dannis sports day. It was all a bit of a waste of time really as she was far too busy taking part and didn't have time to talk to us. Nevertheless it was good to see her in that environment. We took Jonny back home and drove back to Snells Beach. In th,  evening we met up with Jill , her daughter and her friend at the Salty Dog for a meal. Our last day was to be pretty memorable especially for N as he and Rob went fishing. Rob had recounted, many times, how the fish would jump onto the hook and they would catch loads of them. Typical fisherman's tales we thought! They were borrowing Danny's (Jules'son) boat only problem being that the engine was sick. Rob took it down the road to be repaired and then off they went to launch the boat from Martins Bay.
Julie and I had planned to go to the beach but as she wasn't feeling very well I took myself down to the beach at Snells along with a book. I spent a happy couple of hours down there altenately reading my book and swimming in the sea with a few strolls along the beach as well before walking back home. I took advantage of some free time too to sort out all our belongings and do most of the packing, not an easy job. The "boys" arrived back about 3pm, both were wet through and Rob was somewhat sunburnt. They did indeed have a load of fish, mainly snapper, and Nigel said that Rob had been right and that the fish had indeed been so easy to catch. Although they had brought back a good haul they had thrown many, too small to keep, back.It hadn't all been plain sailing though as the engine took quite some time to start when they launched the boat and then again much longer and many running repairs to start it again to return to shore. Even then their troubles weren't over as just about as they were to land the boat a large wave came and swamped them catapulting Rob onto the beach! It goes without saying that we had fish for late lunch and supper that night. It was my first taste of snapper and it was so good. We finished our packing and got most of the stuff in Rob's car ready for an early start the next day.
We were up early, said goodbye to Julie and left at 6.45 am to go to Te Atatu to see the children and say goodbye to them before they went off to school. I felt very emotional and had to get the goodbyes over quickly before I started to cry! Rob dropped us off at the mall near where he works and we went in there for a look around and to have some breakfast before meeting up with Rob and going to the airport. We were still too early to check in so we found some seats and left N and the luggage there whilst I walked outside with Rob to say goodbye to him - more tears. Soon it was time to check in, go through immigration and wait for our flight to KL.