Kia Ora! Auckland

29th Aug - 1st Sept 2013

Kia Ora to the Land of the Long White Cloud. A new country and a new adventure. Moving from Cairns in the tropics to New Zealand was certainly a shock to the system. I arrived in Auckland and within minutes I was bloody freezing! It didn't help that it was raining either. I wasn't used to rain and neither were my trainers. They had never been tested in wet weather because there simply hadn't been any!

Auckland

The next day its still raining but I decided to go out exploring anyway and it turns out there's nothing to see in Auckland. Apart from the sky tower there's nothing iconic to see or anything particularly interesting to do. I actually spent most of the day running round all the branches of ANZ bank trying to get them to set me up an account without booking an appointment. Thankfully the 5th branch let me do it at the counter which was lucky because all my money was in that account and I had no way of accessing it and I only had $20 left!

That night at the hostel there was an old guy in my room who told me he snores really loud which filled me with excitement. The two other people I bumped into on my floor weren't really very talkative so I decided to go down to the bar for my free meal and try and strike up a conversation. Nope, no one wants to talk to me in there either!

Ah that blue sky I've gotten so used to

The next morning the sun was out and I decided today was going to be a better day. I was told the best thing to do in Auckland was to climb Mt Eden which is a couple of hours walk out of the CBD. Its a dormant volcano in the heart of the suburbs and you can see almost the entire city from the top of it.

Awesome view

The crater itself at the top of the mountain is absolutely huge. It takes about 5 minutes to walk around it and its really deep. It was quite a site to be honest and having never climbed any sort of volcano before I thought it was pretty cool. When you looked around you could see a whole series of these old volcanoes springing up here and there.

Top of Mount Eden

On the way I walked through the gardens and past the duck pond where there weren't any ducks.

Duck pond, no ducks

Gardens

Rachel and Danielle arrived in Auckland that night and the next day we went up the sky tower. I expected more from this but when you get up to the to there isn't much to see. You're stood in the only iconic building in the city so I didn't really know what to look at. There was a glass floor which always added a bit of excitement.

Argh

Please don't break!

Auckland CBD

You can do a zip line descent thingy from the top of the tower so we watched a guy jump of the building. I'm assuming he lived but I never actually saw him again.

Suicide?

There wasn't really much to look at so I took the girls to the volcano to get a better view of the city. We got the bus there because they didn't fancy walking both ways. We walked back to the city via Auckland museum. 

Back on the volcano

Auckland Museum 

The museum was cool. There were fish and bugs and lots of stuff on volcanoes. There was a simulation room where you could experience what it would be like if a volcano went off in harbour. It was kinda cool. The whole room shook and you could see it through the 'window'.

Listening to Attenborough

The was an underwater section where I fell asleep on some bean bags listening to David Attenborough. Must have been out for about 10 minuites before I realised the girls had gone.

Crab

Nemo's a long way from home

For an extra $2 we got the ticket for the Sky Tower where you could go back a second time in 24 hours so we went back that night to see if it looked any better.

Sky Tower

View

That would be a no then!

We went to a couple of Irish bars before having an early night. The next day we were all getting on the Kiwi Experience bus. Danielle and Rachel were going East and I was going North to do the cape. It was nice seeing them again. Its weird that they are both home now but I hope I get to see them again one day. Rachel did open my eyes to one thing. "New Zealand is just like Yorkshire, just with bigger mountains" - GENIUS!

Warming by the fire

I heard from a few people that Auckland is a bit rubbish. That's an opinion I find hard to disagree with. I didn't rate Auckland at all. Its the biggest city in New Zealand and I just thought there would be more to it. Its just another city. But then you don't come to New Zealand to visit the cities do you.