Auckland is a wonderful gateway city for travelers. It sits right on the water, and many of its main avenues, like Queen Street, run from the hills on the outskirts of the CBD right down to the harbor's edge. When the wind is blowing fiercely in Auckland, as it is today, it feels like the whole city might just sail away, along with the hundreds of vessels moored in the harbor.
Because so many tourists come into town on boats and cruise ships, the restaurants, bars and coffeehouses situated at the water's edge, on Custom Street, for example, are packed with tour groups speaking German, French, or U.K.-accented English. They enter these small shops en masse, temporarily wreaking chaos with dozens of orders, their suitcases and backpacks everywhere...and then, just moments later, their group leader gives the signal, and they are all gone, leaving only tables-full of empty cups, saucers and glasses. If you're not a tour group member, as we are not, it's like swimming in the ocean...a wave comes in, washes over us, then recedes, leaving us in relative peace and quiet.
We are here today, the first of a couple of days in Auckland, before we take our flight to Beijing. We left our home in the Hokianga during a storm with gale-force winds and driving rain, and here, almost five hours by car south, the storm is just as powerful. No matter, we are officially on our way on a two-month journey that just begins in Beijing, and I confess to being excited... in fact, wicked excited.
Today, wet and chilled from the storm, it's easy to remember our biking trip through the Connemara, in Ireland, several years ago. We were there for about two weeks, and it rained, sometimes gently and more often rather violently, for all but three days. There were times the winds off the waters, as we biked along the coastal roads, were so powerful that it was a challenge just to stay upright on the bike, let alone to make any progress. Several times, we were forced to give up the struggle, and call for a taxi to pick us up and drive us to our hotel for the night. After a good meal and a rest, we would get going the next morning, in the rain, once again.
For our China trip, we will have a back-up vehicle, so we won't have to call for a cab...he will be there, behind us by no more than an hour or so, most likely smoking hacking, and spitting, to pass the (for him) boring days waiting for us to reach our biking limits, so he can pick us up and take us to our evening's destination, where dinner and a stiff drink of the local liquor await all of us. But what makes it easy to remember Ireland today is that the challenge of these months of biking is largely unknown at this time, as we've never biked in Northern China before. Will the trials come from the air pollution and haze, or from steep mountain roads, or hot and dusty deserts? Tali has just told me that the worst sandstorm in nine years has just hit Lanzhou, Xinjiang Province, which is directly on our route, destroying over five hundred houses. So I know it won't be easy, however the conditions are when we arrive there, and I just hope that I will be able to participate joyously in the task at hand.
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