AUCKLAND (January 12th - January 22nd 2007)

Hello everyone.

Sorry it has taken me a while to update this journal, trying to get hold of the internet is a nightmare, you can get on to one for 10 minutes but then its so slow it takes 10 minutes to load the screen! Anyways I will try and keep up with it and update it everytime I make a move to my next place.

We finally arrived in Auckland at about midnight on Friday night and went straight to Mike and Jo's (the people were staying with) we then spent the weekend travelling up North to Kerikeri and Whangerei to meet Jo's family and watch Mike play in a football tournement so by the time we arrived back at home on the Sunday night I couln't keep my eyes open. We did get to visit some really nice beaches and do some sight seeing on the way up though but spent the rest of the week catching up with jet lag, I was in my bed by 7.30 every night, it was a crazy life I was living!

We went into Auckland City Centre on the Monday to have a little look around and just to find our feet, Auckland is really nice but much smaller then I would have thought. We spent the rest of the week just doing the same really and doing lunch in the harbour, its so nice down there. We also looked around for the beaches so we could top up our tans, we mostly visited a beach 10 minutes away from the house called Cornwallis and visited a few surfer beaches in Kerekere and Piha where I saw a huge purple jelly fish that chased my through the sea!

We brought a car aswel,  it's a white Nissan Bluebird with brown interior, very nice!. Its a cool little run-around. It only cost 400 quid. It will work out so much cheaper than renting a car all the time and we can re-sell it when we come home. We have also got a job starting next Monday 29th January fruit picking. The pay is pretty good. Its not so much less than working in an office. Its in a place called Napier which is on the other side of the Island to Auckland, about 7 hours away. We will be there for about 3-2weeks doing that then will move to a different place and do some fruit picking somewhere else. We figured its the best way to see everywhere instead of staying in the same place and being stuck in an office. We will stay in B&B's or backpackers, you can get a double room for 7 pounds a night! And they are really nice. The place we will stay at in Napier is called Napier Prison Backpackers. It's an old converted prison which should be interesting. I'll put some photo's on of that and all the other stuff soon.

That's about it for now I think. I'll do another next week.

Bye for now....