Auckland Birdwood House B&B

... is a mixed bag at the moment, some days it's hot and sunny and others, such as today, is like Oct in Britain wet and windy all day. Not been out of Auckland yet, we will hopefully get a car soon so we can get out and about at weekends and go tramping as it's called here.
On the whole we have found Auckland a lovely place with it's parks dotted about the city, we may even take up jogging !!!Anyway lots of pics to come.

... and then turned back to do the harbour from the other side. We had a race with an America's Cup yacht, (we won, yah boo), then went under the Auckland harbour bridge. The bungee people demonstrated a bungee jump for us from the underside - Kiwis seem to have a bit of an obsession with it, eh? From the bridge we went for a chug round Westhaven Marina, which is absolutely packed with yachts - hundreds upon hundreds. Seems every Aucklander has a leisure boat in there. from ...

Here comes...










Tall flat white & chicken pie : NZD 8.9












Round trip ferry ticket for Devonport : NZD 10.0 ...

... and went down to the underground car-park only to find that they had towed our car away. The hotel initially insisted it was our fault and then did a quick-about face, uttered several large apologies and whisked us across town in a taxi to collect our skanky mobile from the compound. Thankfully, we just about had time to sort this out before catching our flight to Tahiti.

Not the most exciting place we´ve been to on our travels but at least the travel doctor spoke English!

... a mountain over Queenstown. Preferable to his first nickname which was Small Cock. Quite funny actually that one - for the Stray drivers go by their nikcnames for everything - such as calling up hostels and reserving our dorms. "Hi Jenny - this is Small cock from Stray...". Need I say any more. Skins is as sound as Nat my original driver.

Kaikoura

North of Christchurch on the way back to Picton where we'll ferry our way back over to Wellington ...

... digs' after a long day of fun and games, most of us opting for the dinner of spag bowl. It was a really good oportunity for everyone to get to know one another and a load of us went into town in search of the local nightlife....we found a bar that fitted the bill and after a few beers everyone was well aqainted. The wierdest part of the day was we discovered one of the lads on our bus, Connor, was a friend of a friend and we had actually met him before back at home. Such a small world!

... took at the dock. After I left Waitomo, I headed back towards Auckland. The roads through Hamilton and back to Auckland are of pretty good quality and I made good time. I arrived back in Auckland at about 8:30 pm. I went down the street to a little Chinese restaurant and got some carry out (take away as they say here) and ate it in my hotel room. I can't believe it, but this is my last full day in New Zealand. I catch a plane tommorow for San Francisco.

... which was great fun. Katelyn did really well and seems to really enjoy it. The following day we left Auckland for the Coramandel where we spent 2 days exploring the beautiful coast line, went swimming in the sea and sat in thermal pools on Hot Water Beach. We have come back to Auckland today to catch up with the rest of Matts family before heading north to the Bay of Islands next week.

OMG! It took forever! A total of 20 hours flying. Four hours to L.A., 6-hour layover (Thanks Alvarado's for the picking me up and gettin' lunch and some tourist time at Griffin Observatory), then a 15 hour flight from L.A. to New Zealand, then a three hour layover, then another 4 hours from New Zealand to Adelaide.

... water at the lake and streams was actually bearably warm enough, but if
it was summer, there's no doubt we'd have jumped right in.


We
also saw lots of tea trees all along the paths and native "bush"
plantlife. Then we walked along ...