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Published: January 14th 2008
Auckland
Sky Tower by dayHappy New Year everyone! Hope that you all had a great Christmas and enjoyed the New Year celebrations wherever you are in the world. Apologies for the tardiness in getting this blog published, the internet cafes in New Zealand are not up to South American standards, difficult to find, and outrageously expensive. Its amazing how every internet cafe we used in South America was fully equipped with Skype and all mod cons... In stark contrast, when we ask whether an internet cafe has Skype in New Zealand, all we get is a blank or confused look. Anyway, we finally got the photos uploaded. So, without further ado, we now present to you Blog Number 21.
After the trip of a lifetime in South America for over 3 months, the time finally arrived for us to move on... We arrived in Auckland at 4am local time on 27th December (since we crossed the International Date line, we had no St Stephen's day!), tired and still a little sad to be leaving South America and at the prospect of not speaking Spanish anymore. That soon changed when we arrived in Auckland city centre and saw the shops... We didn't realise how bad
Auckland
Stunning art or subsidence problems? we had it in South America until now! We had been deprived of the English language, decent clothes shops, cafes, sandwiches, regular tea, creamy coffee... for 3 1/2 months! So as you can imagine, it took us maybe ooh, 2 minutes... to settle back into the developed world lifestyle. By 8.30am we were sitting in a gorgeous cafe in downtown Auckland, sipping our lattes and flipping through House and Garden magazine. I guess you could describe us as "adaptable"... However, there was a moment of embarrasment where after speaking Spanish only for over 3 1/2 months, I actually couldn't formulate a sentence in English when the waitress asked me what I would like for breakfast.
The Kiwis are possibly the friendliest people I've ever met. As soon as we stepped off our 12 hour flight we were greeted with wide, welcoming smiles and good banter from the immigration officers (at 4am in the morning!). They even cleaned our tent and trekking shoes! (this wasn't exactly to be nice to us, New Zealand has very strict Environmental protection laws and they don't want us tramping about their country with our filthy South American- stained shoes). We started to get very
Auckland
Gloria Jeans Coffee Shop....blissfully naive. excited about our 5 week trip around New Zealand. In my Dad's own words, "It's the perfect country... Rugby, wine and scenery". I have to say I fully endorse his opinion... what else could one want!
We basically spent 2 full days in Auckland... in the shops. Even Mark was in his element. There were many squeals of delight as we perused the outdoor shops, buying much needed sleeping mats for our tent and looking in vintage clothes shops and camera shops. You'll be glad to hear that we took a break in between the shopping days and took the ferry to Waiheke island, just off the coast of Auckland. We walked around the island checking out the extremely stylish contemporary Kiwi architecture, lusting after every house we saw. We spotted an idyllic looking beach, in a secluded cove and decided to wander down to it and relax in the sun. It actually turned out to be a nudist beach and we were the only bathing suit clad people there! After some consideration, Mark decided that this was his one opportunity to really connect with nature and figured that his swimming shorts had to go. Next thing I knew
Auckland
Ferry Terminal he was walking briskly towards the sea... in the nip. He enjoyed his bathing session in the clear waters until a large group of teenagers started walking down the beach (clothed). After hiding in the sea for about 10 more minutes he eventually plucked up the courage to stand up and run to his towel. Obviously I did nothing to help him, and just laughed as he frantically ran back to the beach! We sunbathed for another hour or so, (the beach was stunning) but soon we were completely surrounded by naked old people and decided it was time to leave!
We had planned to spend New Year in a town called Whitianga on the Coromandel Peninsula with my Dad's cousin, Bobbie, so on 30th December (after another day's spending in the shops!) we hopped on a bus to Whitianga. Bobbie met us at the bus station and brought us back to her lovely house. It was really great to spend some time with family and chill out for a few days. Whitianga is a gorgeous little town located right on the beach. The population is 4,000 but during the Christmas holidays this soars to a whopping 35,000, much
Auckland
Harbour View to the distaste of the locals. Bobbie cooked us a lovely dinner that evening and we caught up on all the family news. The next day Mark and I took the ferry across the bay and visited my great aunt's grave, who emigrated to New Zealand with her husband and family about 40 years ago. The graveyard itself is beautiful and is located right beside the sea. It was really special to visit her grave, which is so far away from home. We spent the rest of the afternoon chilling out on the beach, soaking up the rays. Mark also took this opportunity to catch up on some exercise, and went swimming and running for a while. Since it was New Year's Eve we headed down to one of the busy local pubs and rang in the New Year with some Aussie and Kiwi guys. It was a great night. We headed back to the house around 12.45 and stayed up til about 2.30am chatting with Bobbie and her friends.
Needless to say, we were a bit "tired" the next day and didn't feel up to doing much so we spent some more time on the beach and ate
lots of ice cream. Bobbie took us for a drive around Whitianga and its surroundings, and Mark and I spent most of this time gawking and taking photos of beautiful houses! After this, Bobbie cooked up a storm... just what we had been wanting for months... roast chicken, roast veg and potatoes, gravy, etc. Deee-licious! The three of us then stuffed ourselves with maltesers (purchased at Santiago airport in an effort to get rid of all our Chilean pesos!) and Bobbie's homemade Christmas cake. The next day we (reluctantly) headed back to Auckland with our tummies full, clothes cleaned, heads refreshed and rearing to go!
Our next adventure was a trip up north to the fabulous Bay of Islands. Before that however, I had my heart set on buying a dress I had seen in Auckland on our first day. The shop in town didn't have my size and they ordered it from their airport shop. We went to pick it up before we started our journey but it still hadn't arrived. Of course, I was determined that I HAD to have the bloody dress so after picking up our rental car, Mark drove me the whole way to
Waiheke Island
Modern Architecture house on the hill the airport which was in the complete opposite direction to the Bay of Islands, and it also took us an hour and a half to get there due to road works! I'm a lucky girl. I got the dress anyway and off we headed. the drive was beautiful, apart from the maniac Kiwi drivers. They drive like absolute psychos, and drink driving is a huge, HUGE problem here. We came across 3 serious car accidents with more than 2 cars involved, in 2 days of driving. Don't worry parents, Mark is being very careful on the roads, especially when those boy racers drive by! We eventually arrived in the small town of Paihia, checked into our hostel and pitched our tent. Paihia is really nice and the weather was gorgeous when we arrived. We had a wander down to the beach and the water was so clear. Really beautiful. That night we went to a local bar and indulged ourselves in huge gourmet burgers and a few beers, while enjoying some local guy singing U2 songs and the like. He had a shot of tequila after every song and while he started a bit frigid and nervous, it wasn't long
before he was jumping around his little corner stage and acting like Bono. All very funny!
We had booked to go sailing around the bay and swimming with dolphins the next day. Of course, the one day we visited the Bay of Islands, the clouds decided to come out in force. It was still quite warm though and we had a lovely day out on the boat visiting islands, bbq lunch and Mark even did some snorkelling. It was a pity that the weather wasn't up to scratch though as the sea and islands would look so much nicer. At one stage during the sailing trip, I was very close to embarrassing myself (AGAIN). Mark was in the toilet and I was sitting at the front of the boat watching the water hit the bow of the catamaran. Suddenly I noticed that the water was red, and the first thing that came to my head was that we had run over a dolphin and it's blood was everywhere. I was just about to start screaming, "STOP! STOP THE BOAT! WE'RE KILLING THE DOLPHINS! STOP THE BOAT!" when Mark arrived back and just as I was about to tell him
what was going on, I realised that the water was not in fact red... the front of the boat was painted red, reflecting off the water... Phew!!!!!!!!! That would have been seriously embarrassing! Mark still hasn't let me live it down...
Apparently, my new name is now Ailsa (of Home and Away fame). Mark refuses to call me by any other name now that we are travelling close to Australia. He likes to pretend he's Alf Stewart and every few minutes I hear "Flamin' hell Ailsa", or "Strewth"!
Stay tuned for more North Island Adventures... next stop, Rotorua.
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Fi
non-member comment
Loving your blog
Lads I just love this blog its tremendous! By the way how cool is NZ??? Your pics have brought back so many amazing memories, we loved Waiheike island, and to see you guys standing in the same spots as us awee brings a tear to the eye! Anyway look forward to seeing the rest of your travels, you are going to love Queenstown, its fab and make sure you go luaging there, we spent about 5 hours luaging with friends so much fun! Take Care of yourselves and keep the blogs coming Ps Mark how could you go in the buff on the beach haha and Kate I was loving your "They are killing the dolphins" hahah See ya guys Love Fi xxxx