Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand, but it is minuscule in comparison to cities like Melbourne or Sydney. I arrived in Auckland on St Patricks day so all the beer gardens were packed at around 6pm with everyone pretending they were Irish. It made me chuckle when there was a Japanese lad in the hostel going around with his face painted in an Irish flag. There is a harbour which is very quiet compared to the Sydney one, but walking around, you still get food menus thrown into your face. There is also a bridge which apparently you can bungee jump off, but compared to Sydney harbour bridge, it is again very small.
The highlight of Auckland really is the sky tower and it 'towers' over everything else really (terrible that wasnt it?). The picture to the left was taken from when I was near the top of the tower. There were some good views at the top and you could see sights such as Eden Park (the rugby stadium), amongst other things.
After 1 and half days in Auckland (you only really need that)...I woke up bright and early and boarded the Stray bus (the tour company is called Stray Travel), which I travelled on for a few weeks around New Zealand. What I didn't know at the time, was that when I woke up at 7am that day, that was to become the norm for a few weeks.
I will briefly tell you what I did for the first few days on the North Island:
Day 1 - We went to Hahei. And visited hot water beach where you dig a hole in the sand and the water turns hot. It was obvious within 5 minutes that the water wasn't going to turn warm so I just threw the spade in the sea and went for a swim. It turns out, it only turns hot before at specific times of the day, and we got there too late. The accommodation was like a campsite lodge. It was extremely smart and some people got 9 bed dorms, but I got a 4 bed dorm (for the same price)...bargain.
Day 2 - Visited Raglan which is ideal for surfing, but I'm not a much of a surfer, so there wasn't that much to do for me here. At the time I had a really good group of people on the bus,, so the highlight probably was playing free pool all night, although some of the girls enjoyed seeing the multiple number of glow warms that only come out when its...ermm.... dark...OBVIOUSLY.
Day 3 - I said when I first knew I was to visit New Zealand that I would be happy to just see the beautiful scenery that everyone seems to rave on about, however it is famous for adventure activities and I probably won't do them again, so I did want to do Black water rafting. We were stopping at Waitomo caves for around 4 hours and people who didn't do the activities on offer apparently were complaining and were sat bored in the cafe. I don't usually just follow like sheep but I as I haven't done it before and it was the main place to do in NZ I thought I was better off doing it than regretting it. We saw plenty of glow worms, and did what is called 'tuba tubing' (sat in some tire things and floated down the water in the caves). We had to wear wellies and me being me, when I was swimming in the cave, I only went and lost one of them. The price of the wellie if lost was extortionate so off I went underwater searching for it. I found the wellie pretty quickly and was highly amusing for the rest of the group.......only could happen to me eh?
At night time we stayed in maketu where we were treated to the Haka. We then attempted to do it ourselves. Somehow I don't think I looked half as scary as the New Zealand rugby boys when they do it (even if some people say I have an evil camera pose). Was all good fun and I learnt quite a lot about the Maori culture. We slept on the floor at night time in the hall where we had earlier (attempted to) perform the Haka. There was around 40 of us all sleeping in this hall with around 2 mattresses each. I wouldn't recommend it if you have a stiff neck. We all woke up again for an early start with the group alarm being the Abba CD. I think I officially woke up to the song of "Mama Mia", which if I remember correctly from my mums CD, that is track 4. So I managed to sleep through about 10 minutes of Abba. That is of course, unless the Alarm started on track 4.
That will do for now, as I wouldn't want all my blog followers taking in too much information at once would I?
- comments