Catching up

 The past few days have mostly been catching up with our antipodean clan, family dinners, meeting kevs friends, playing with babies. The usual stuff and it has been very nice. Crispy has loved it. It’s not adventuring and there has been nothing to recount that would be of interest to anyone “out of the loop”.

Suffice to say it has been lovely. We have had a couple of days and mornings mooching around the immediate area. Dear old LynNZ lent us her car so we could get about. A day trip to Auckland with Dave and Lisa, a ride to Clarke’s beach and a steam train ride on a vintage railway from Glenbrook to Waitutu. We have only one more day here before continuing our adventures to our eventual return to Crispy HQ.

On our arrival in New Zealand I was keeping a close eye on the dreaded COVID situation in India. It seems very likely that the Indian Government will introduce a 7 day quarantine for passengers arriving from Singapore. This means not only would we require 72 hour RT-PCR tests, which would be a nightmare to arrange and cost a fortune, but also require us to spend seven nights separated in a government health facility on arrival. As you can imagine Crispy was not too keen on this option. She’s a game old bird but seven nights in an Indian army camp on her own didn’t really flick her switch. I tried to reassure her it would be OK but she was having non of it. I think she must have watched Tenko as a girl and it has really put her off.

Not one to go against her wishes I fired up the old eyepod and scoured the interweb for a more suitable option. We now leave New Zealand for Singapore as already arranged on the 17th. Once in Singapore we are going to cross overland into Malaysia and spend the next couple of weeks making our way north before eventually finishing in Kuala Lumpur. I have managed to get a refund on the Indian flights so we are not really any worse off financially. We now fly home from Kuala Lumpur on the 4th of Feb.

We have travelled through Malaysia before and know the country quite well. I have hopefully worked out an achievable route that will take us to places that we have not been before. It should be a great adventure and Crispy is well up for the challenge. We are looking forward to it.

Tomorrow Dave, Lisa and us are going to treat LynNZ to a nice lunch in Davenport overlooking Auckland harbour. It should be a lovely day and a nice way to say goodbye before heading west. Kev has had to go back to the Coromandel to get ready for work unfortunately so we said our goodbyes today. It’s been great to finally meet him after all this time and we thank him for his kindness and company.

Bare and Crispy signing of Pukekohe, New Zealand