Blogs from Auckland, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 338

we arrived in auckland early yesterday. meesh and i spent the day getting oriented in the city. we checked in where it was required and finished our paperwork for jobs we might get somewhere down the road....then we walked and walked and walked and walked. we ended up atop the skytower which affords a panoramic view of this city surrounded by ocean. in reality our day was uneventful, just all so new. refreshing is the right word i think. auckland cannot possibly overload one's senses, it can simply and patiently stimulate them. even test driving a car on the left side of the road didn't scare me....it would have anywhere else. meesh and i were both amazed at the aura of the city. for me it is a drastic change from the pace and feel ... read more

Greetings from Godzone (God's own country)! Cait and I landed in Auckland yesterday morning. We're at the Fat Camel hostel in downtown. Lots of young backpackers, loud colorful decor and clean, if impersonal. We've already done so much in just two days. The Sky Tower is the tallest point in the Southern Hemisphere at 382 meters (? Not sure about that fact.) We've seen at least half a dozen people jump off it! On Monday, Cameron Dias jumped off! They attach you to cables and you have a controlled fall for about 12 seconds. Parnell Road is filled with cafes, a GREAT chocolate boutique, restaurants and craft stores. Queen Street is the downtown with courtyards of Asian food stands, tall buildings, designer stores and the only apartment buildings we've seen here in Auckland (everyone owns houses). ... read more

Wagons Ho! We picked up the car, (a crappy silver Nissan with a worrying built-in symphony of clicks, whirs and clunks), and headed up north to Pahia, (which for some unknown reason you have to pronounce like a war cry - PRRRAAAAAIIIIEEEEEEEAAAAA), stopping at Centrabury Lodge after spotting an offer for free kayak hire. The water was quite choppy, and it'd been ages since I'd last kayaked, but we soon got the hand of it and were zooming around the beautiful bay of islands, dodging the rocks, ferries and speed boats. This place is really amazing - the horizon is dotted with stunning collections of small, wild uninhabited islands, one of which we landed on and I proclaimed as the Principality of Rickland, where the first Pugil Tennis competition ever in the world took place. ... read more

A bright sunny morning here in Auckland. Yesterday I spent the day with my new bunkmate Sarah, from the UK, and we went to a nice beach outside of Auckland called Mission Bay. It seems there's a great epidemic going on here, and it's called Ice Cream. I saw that they had a Movenpick there in Mission Bay, and the lineup was about 2 blocks long. New Zealanders love their ice cream. I layed out on the beach for a couple of hours, and enjoyed the people watching. It's a very family orientated place. Everywhere you go people have their coolers (or chilly bins as they call it here), parked on the narrowest roads, and sitting on the steepest hills, all taking in the nice spring weather and sunshine. And of course there are many people ... read more

A blog cant get more up-to-date than this.... Today I faced my fear of heights and won. I ascended the tallest building in the southern hemisphere and after having a look around, instead of taking the lift down, I decided to go outside and jump. Later on I climbed up again, donned a harness and climbed up the inside of the mast to the 'crows nest', a hundred metres above where most people get to. I never thought I'd get to do either of these things. The idea of clambering around on the top of a tall building, on the wrong side of the glass, has always been the stuff of nightmares and morbid fascination for me. I can tell you with no doubt at all that that standing on a ledge 300m above the ground, ... read more