Welcome to NZ

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Well, we made it to NZ in one piece. After a 14 hour plane journey with LAN Chile (who we love) we arrived at 5am 2 days after we had set off. Jet lagged and sleep deprived all we wanted to do was crash out for an hour or two but it wasn't to be. We couldn't check into our room at Auckland Central Backpackers until 11am which meant 5 hours to kill in a darkened city. The hostel was completely different to what we were used to in South America. It had 500 beds in it and a giant internet cafe and travel agency. So after hanging around for bit with Christian (our Austrian friend we met in Santiago) and meeting up with Becky and Tim we finally got to our room. Oh, I forgot the most important thing we did that morning... we found a cafe and had bacon and eggs on toast with a cup of tea each - proper tea with proper milk! It was amazing. Unfortunately a little calculating later we had worked out we had spent our entire days budget already and it wasn't even 9am. I think that was the first warning that NZ was going to be expensive!

After our mini nap (in a room that smelled of marmite but had an amazing view of some of the city's skyscrapers) we up and raring to go. The next couple of days involved a run for me, which I'd been too scared to do in South America (yes, I'm a wimp), where ironically I had a car pull up next to me and a weird bloke try and speak to me (perhaps I would have been better off in SA after all!), some mooching for Mike, a dominos pizza and some clothes shopping!! Oh, and sleeping, plenty of that too. Auckland really wasn't as exciting as we had expected. Its pretty quiet really, part of that impression is probably because of the jet lag though. We went up the Sky Tower in the centre of town which was pretty cool. There were some great views of the city from the top floor - its the tallest building in the southern hemisphere apparently. We also got to watch some crazy fools jumping off the top of it suspended from a harness on a wire - I admire their bravery!

Whilst we were there we began to plan the rest of our trip which involves us parting ways for a week in the North Island. After 5 months of living in each others pockets we thought it might be nice to see what being on our own was like for a little bit. We were also interested in what independent travelling would be like and this seemed the safest place to do it. So the Monday after we arrived I set off with my back pack and a ticket for the Stray Bus Company and Mike headed to the nearest bus station.

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Photos

Sky Tower
This is from just outside our hostel

Don't Look Down....
Inside the Sky Tower

Leaning against the window
For some reason we thought we'd test the strength of the windows when we were ridiculously high in the air...

Back down to Earth
They provided a window in the lift floor for us to see the ground hurtling towards us... great!