NZ : Auckland

Leaving Fiji was hard, well, who can bring themselves to leave paradise without shedding a few tears. We departed feeling a little apprehensive about our next adventure and sad to leave the life we had grown so familiar with and our Fiji friends, especially Sophie who had let us live in her house for almost a month!

We were back on the road again, out in the unknown and relying on couchsurfing. Being in a big city after weeks of rural living was actually quite daunting yet an exciting prospect. We met up with our first host Jason and stayed two nights at his flash city centre pad with the greatest view of the sky tower from the hot tub.

We were introduced to Auckland with a big walk Jason took us on and realised that all the relaxing in Fiji had left us totally unfit! We were gasping for air by the end of the walk. We played squash that evening and went to an open mic night to check out Aucklands local talent.

Our second day saw us watching the Mauri cultural show at the Museum where we saw an awesome performance of the Huka and spent hours pouring over the exhibitions.

We were blessed with fine weather in Auckland and spent our third day wandering the city, the infamous K road was our first destination, full of second hand stores and more pre loved clothing than you could shake a stick at! We gawked at the glamorous shops on Ponsenby and indulged in a bit of bargain retail therapy.

In the afternoon we went down to the beautiful Auckland harbour, the fishmarkets had an astonishing array of seafood on offer and we had some freshly smoked mussels. There was a really cute book swap based in an old shipping container where people could sit and read with a great view. We stumbled across The Warehouse 'where everyone gets a bargain' and we did just that (and have carried on doing so ever since)

 

We were headed to our second couch surfers on the third day, Thomas and the family Biggs, where we were kindly put up in their comfy camper van. John took us to the Takapuna farmers market the next day and for a lovely stroll along the beach and to the local underground bunkers where we ran around like kids in the rooms that used to be used for storing amunitions many years ago. We were introduced to Jesters wonderful pies, a New Zealand delicacy.

This was to be a very important day... Our plans were to board the Kiwi Experience a.k.a. 'The big green shag bus' first thing Monday morning, but as the day approached we became less and less enthusiastic about the idea. A bus full of drunken 18 year olds trying to shag each other, or worse still trying to shag us, was not our idea of independent travel, so we did the only logical thing we could have done... We bought a car!

 

 

A maroon, 20 year old automatic Subaru Legacy wagon. $1000 lighter and feeling on top of the world we drove the new vehicle to meet Ruth, a friend of Jan's from university now living in Auckland. Ruth proved to be the most awesome encyclopaedia on anything and everything good to do in NZ and even spared us her old guidebook to help us get about.

We shovelled down platefuls of sushi and made plans for our next journey now that we were on our own in the big wide world again. After much brainstorming we decided to head to the remote Northlands and so the next day, off we went...

Peace and love,

Jan and Sooz