TA Day 82 (off trail)

TA Day 82: Monday 10 March 2025

Day 1 off trail - going from National Park to Auckland

Today was the big hitchhiking day! The day were we would try our luck with getting all the way to Auckland. The goal was to reach Auckland without Kim's parents figuring out that we were going there, and not them coming to us tomorrow as originally planned.

We got ready in the morning, and 10 o'clock we stood ready by the road and started hitching. It didn’t even take 5 minutes before a car stopped and picked us up. The very nice man took us all the way from National Park to Hamilton (200 km & ~3 hours).

After a quick lunch break at McDonald's in Hamilton, it was time to continue. It wasn’t a great spot to hitch from, but luckily someone else stopped just within a few minutes again, and brought us to Huntly (30 km, ~25 mins). Same with the last ride, which got us pretty much all the way to Auckland (Manukau) (75 km, ~1 hour).

Just as we got off, my parents reached out to us as they were at the car rental place and just about to pick up their rental car. We were afraid they would leave before we got there, so Lukas tried to stall them over the phone while he ordered an Uber. Luckily they didn’t seem to notice anything weird as we asked them sneaky questions, like the name of the car rental company 🫢

It was some intense minutes as we waited for the Uber to show up, then again before we jumped off.

We got out, just in front of their car pretty much, just before they were about to leave! What a timing! They were confused and shocked, but happy!

We joined their plans for the rest of the day, geocaching on Puketutu Island, and then we hade takeaway from a Thai restaurant and got ourselves a room in the same hotel as them, near the Airport.

Today's:

Weather: Sunny