Hey guys,

Well here we are in Auckland or the 'city of sails' as it is sometimes known.It came to be known this way as the city is located between two very large harbours, one leading to the Pacific Ocean and the other the Tasman Sea. This and the high standard of living here mean there are more ships per capita here than anywhere else in the world.

When we last left you we had checked into our hostel, called Bamber House.This is a lovely old mansion house located in the Mount Eden district of Auckland, about a half hour walk from the city centre. The hostel looks out onto Mount Eden which is one of 3 main dormant volcanoes that the city is built around. In fact there are supposedly 22 volcanoes in central Auckland but on 3 can been easily seen to be such, as the rest are much smaller and have buildings on them.

We got up early our first full day here with the intention of doing what we have done in most of the big cities and spending the day walking round, seeing the sights and getting a feel for the city. No sooner as we set off we experienced our first bit of Auckland weather - it went from clear blue sky to complete cloud and rain then 15 min later it was clear blue and sunny again (this has happened about every half an hour the whole time we have been here). They say this is a city that can have 4 seasons in one day and although we have only had 2 so far they seem to interchange far too regularly!

Our first visit was to Auckland's 'Winter-garden', within the city's largest park, located next to the Auckland museum, not that we went in there!The gardens were made up of three main areas, two large greenhouses with tropical plants (and vegetable plants) and an outside area with lots of native tree ferns.From there we headed down into the city centre, passing through the main shopping areas, Auckland university and past all the government buildings.Eventually we made it out to the harbour front, where there are lots of bars and restaurants to enjoy, while ogling at the millionaire's yachts in the harbour - not too dissimilar to parts of Sydney.

After the obligatory afternoon drink we walked back up to the Sky Tower, the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere.Luckily for Auckland it's earthquake/volcano proof - apparently the strange shaped sides help it to bend - it also cost less to build the thing than it did to build the train station (which we're still yet to find!!)At £20 quid a go we decided the lift to the top was a tad overpriced, although for a minor sum of £100 you can jump off the thing…think we'll save that for another day!!

The next day we'd planned on heading north to see some more rural parts of the north island, and the coastal areas, seeing as we'd flown by them over the last week.We'd have liked to head up to the top of the island, where the Tasman and Pacific oceans meet, but at an estimated 6/7 hour drive each way, we cut our losses and stayed within an hour of Auckland!

After a quick drive up to the summit of nearby Mount Eden, we drove over to the west coast (Tasman sea) in the morning and after a spot of getting lost on some rather windy roads we found Karekare beach; a black sand beach in a stunning cove - more of a surfing beach than swimming - it was certainly a bit too cold to tempt us into the sea!A bit further up and we stopped at another beach where there was a large gannet colony - since most of them migrate by March to the warmer climate in Oz there were only around 100 of them left but it was nice to see them all the same.

From here we cut back across the country to the east coast, not too hard when the two are less than 50km apart, and arrived at Goat Island Marine Reserve. Here we stopped for some well deserved fish and chips and then started to make our way down the coast back to Auckland. On the way we stopped at Omaha, which is clearly the rich Aucklanders' weekend/summer getaway with some of the nicest beach houses we have seen. Then visited a Kauri pines sanctuary, these are 800 year old native trees with trunks that are around 7.5 metres round.

When we eventually made our way back down to Auckland we came back in and across the Auckland Harbour Bridge (another thing you can jump off if you want), this is no longer just 1 bridge but 3 connecting bridges to cope with the city's traffic problems, that's what happens when a quarter of the country's population live in one place! Luckily for us the traffic wasn't too bad as we wanted to go back into the city not out and we went for a little drive around some of the other suburbs of the city before visiting one of the city's other volcanoes 'One Tree Hill' (or 'Maungakiekie' in Maori). This was slightly smaller than our more local volcano Mt Eden but provided equally good views across the south of the city. I was quite surprised to find no tree at the top of this volcano! Apparently the tree that had been planted was a foreign tree planted by British settlers to replace a sacred tree of the Maori but as it was not a New Zealand tree it was chopped down 10 years ago by Maori activists. The craters of the volcanoes are regarded as sacred ground 'tapu' and therefore not entered or touched by members of the public. From the tops of the volcanoes we managed to see all the major Auckland sights including both harbours, the city, rugby ground Eden Park (rugby world cup final venue), Alexander park (race course), the harbour and bridge. Who needs a sky tower when you have volcanoes all around the city!

Today we headed over to the north shore, to an area called Devonport.It's only a ten minute ferry ride from Auckland city but it's completely different, with lots of quaint little older houses and pretty rows of shops and cafes - kind of NZ's answer to Manly Bay that we visited in Sydney.Whilst in Devonport we also climbed up one of the volcanoes there, Mt Victoria, where we got a great view over the harbour.This part of Auckland is part of an old navy base so there are big cannons up there and a fort, from when they used to defend the harbour during the 1st and 2nd world war.

Once back in the city we wandered over to the big harbour, where the majority of the private boats are moored - there were literally hundreds of them in the port, which is right next to the business district and swanky restaurants (of course).We're off out for a meal tonight in the local village area of Mt Eden, seeing as it's our last night in NZ (and also cos we're fed up of cooking on our holiday!!)

Off to Kuala Lumpur tomorrow (well actually off to Melbourne but only for 7 hours!!), looking forward to being warm again - Auckland is pretty cold (well 15 degrees ish) at the moment, we're getting a bit fed up of wearing the same pair of trousers every day!!!!

Love Martin and Katie