Auckland - the first stop

Introduction and apology

Before I start, an apology to those who've read the blogs of various of my friends, in particular that of my Scottish Friend (you know who you are... ). I won't try to compete with their breadth and depth - the plan is just to tell it like it was.

Things may, however, develop as we go - for this, I also apologise in advance. ;)

Wednesday the 3rd

So, Wednesday the 3rd of December marked my arrival in New Zealand at the end of a journey not without it's dramas. I'll spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say I'm glad that both my flights were with the same airline, and that I found a taxi that would accept my credit card without running it through an EPOS machine. Thanks, then, to certain high street bank that offers 'Another way' of screwing up trips to far flung destinations by denying you access to your funds on the grounds that you're in a 'fraud hotspot' that also happens to be a tourism hotspot...

Impressions of New Zealand from the flight were along the lines, first, of 'Wow, isn't it narrow!' - you can easily see both coasts of the North Island from the plane. This led, in part, to my first impression of Auckland being 'Wow! That's huge!'. The conurbation that is greater Auckland spreads from coast to coast, and is home to over 1.6 million people, or about 40% of the nation's population.

Auckland from the West Coast of North Island

Not much to report about Wednesday after landing, other than that yes, over 24 hours of travelling does leave you pretty tired, Kiwis are every bit as friendly as their reputation suggests (of which more later), and beer is no cheaper in Auckland than the UK. :)

Thursday the 4th

Thursday was a different matter. First stop, as it was both the most prominent landmark in town and less than 100m from the hotel, was the Sky Tower.

At 328 metres, it is, apparently, the tallest tower in the Southern Hemisphere. A quick check reveals the the Petronas Twin Towers in KL are in fact just about in the Northern Hemisphere (OK, so I felt compelled. :) ).

Auckland's Sky Tower

The view from the observation deck, at around 200m, was pretty spectacular...

Auckland's main harbour from the Sky Tower

N.B. Turns out that someone's put together a full panorama of the view on wikimedia! The weather wasn't as good then, but well worth a click. :)

Of course, it wouldn't be New Zealand if it wasn't also a place from which to do an extreme sport. This is a 'Fan descender jump' known as the SkyJump.






That's 192m up...










Or around this far. The red square in the centre is the landing pad, or 'Mission Control', you can see in the earlier picture of the Sky Tower.

We might come back to this later...

After the Sky Tower, time for the beach. Public transport in Auckland is pretty good (although the locals don't agree, but it beats the hell out of most places I've been in the UK), so a 10 minute bus ride from the centre of town gets you to Mission Bay.

Mission Bay, complete with Kiwi Blokes.

Spent a blissful couple of hours on the beach about 50m up from here. Looking out from the beach, you can see the various islands and peninsulas which punctuate Auckland Bay, and even on a weekday the number of yachts justifies the tag 'City of Sails'.

Back at the hotel, jetlag turned a five minute lie down into two long spells of sleep, so next up was Friday, and my jouney down to Dunedin...