It's just a noise

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Well arrived in Auckland after being stuck on tarmac for hours whilst engineers fixed engine that had lost power. Luckily they got the inflight entertainment working first and managed to watch half the film whilst still on the ground. It also drowned out the very nervous passenger behind me who kept saying ‘I must get off I’ve jinxed the plane’. Still the flight crew were fab opened full bottles of Lindauer for us, then kept topping us up, so obviously had my number!

Auckland - well so far it has been very noisy we are on the 7th floor of an apartment block, surrounded by loads of apartment blocks, that look that at one point they could all have been offices (the apartment actually has those awful vertical office blinds) its very modern, laminate floors, waste disposal, fisher & paykel diswasher,(yes Ard it still has the blue film on) & washer/dryer, actually picking up some very good design features for Harmonie flats! So far though Auckland is brash, the driving is awful, (loads of revving & screeching tyres) definetely need earplugs for where we are staying, had the strangest noise at around 5 this morning that just went on and on, sounded like someone trying to play a wind chime whilst drumming with a rain stick. Hit the beach in Waiheke yesterday, beautiful countryside reminiscent of Devon 40yrs ago.

It may be that we’re staying in the wrong part of Auckland, as we pick up a car today we’ll know more by the end of the day. The city centre isn’t the vibrant metropolis type area we became used to in Sydney and Brisbane, but, hey, it’s a different country. During the day it ‘s a regular city centre, but at night it seems to be taken over by (god I’m starting to feel old again) youth. Coupled with the easier availability of alcohol this makes for a much edgier ambience than other cities we’ve been to so far. There’s a lot more completely outofit characters about, but not especially amusing ones. In common with Australia, in every pharmacy there are loads of warning signs about the purchase of pseudoephedrine based cold remedies. These are used in the manufacture of crystal meth, and from the look of the streets there’s plenty of that going on. Not a good sign. Whatever happened to the good old days when if you wanted some speed you just broke into a pharmacy and stole some proper manufactured stuff, or found a doctor sympathetic to your weight problem? Or found someone who had already found a sympathetic doctor, or made friends with the security guys at the factory. As I’ve long suspected, us oldies did have it better back then. Any way you look at it, there’s a problem down here.
Got the car, headed out of town and New Zealand was more like we pictured it. Rolling hills, wide open spaces, sheep, cows and isolated farmhouses. Every so often we’d pass through tree fern and palm forests, really dense. We stopped at one and went for a walk to a small waterfall, nice walk, but from what I understand we’ll find more impressive scenery the further south we go.
One strange thing I’ve found out here is that car insurance isn’t compulsory. With the standard of driving I’ve seen here I was persuaded that it was worth paying the little extra to reduce the excess on the rental car. There are a lot of cars about with plenty of dents, I guess if you don’t have insurance you don’t bother to get them fixed, but what about the other cars you’ve hit?

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Photos

Fab ferns
Somehow they look much better in their natural habitat

The small waterfall
We walked to

Barb goes junglist
Just to show we ARE having fun

Chickens
Seem to be everywhere