After the usual breakfast and packing up of the Bongo, I headed over to Peter’s to call home.

 

After the calls and after having lunch with Peter, I started to head north for a few days. Since I need to be back around the 24th for a business discussion, I figured that a trip to the northwest, the south side of the Kaipara Harbour, looked good.

 

As I was leaving Peter’s I reached for a bottle of water and realized that I’d left the bottle and my stainless steel thermos in the kitchen at the Manakau Top 10. I wasn’t hopeful, but I headed back there anyway. I asked at the office and they didn’t have it, so I went back to the kitchen, which had been cleaned in the interim. The Thermos bottle wasn’t to be found.

 

I found the water bottle stuck over with the pile of free to be taken giveaways. Since the campground is the last stop for a lot of campervan tourists, they have an area where people can leave stuff, mostly food staples, for others to have. I suspect that the kitchen cleaners put the water and the Thermos over with the free stuff and the Thermos probably was scarfed up within minutes of the kitchen reopening at lunch time.

 

It was my first (and hopefully only) loss from the Bongo. It was a good vacuum bottle and kept water hot enough for tea all day. I picked up another Thermos brand bottle at the nearby warehouse store, but I don’t think it is quite as nice.

 

By mid-afternoon, I finally started heading north, through the city and up to Helensville and then to the Aquatic Park at Parakai, another thermal spring with an associated campground. It seems a nice campground, but the kitchen and ablutions are older, not quite as nice as Miranda or Manakau. There are a few permanent caravans, including a Bongo-sized campervan with attached outbuildings and a garden around it. I’ll post a photo of that one tomorrow.