Auckland, North Island, New Zealand

6th November – 8th November 2017

Leaving Nadi, the three of us got in the taxi, to head towards the airport. On the way, we started chatting to the driver: he started by asking us where we were all going to. When we told him we were going to Auckland, his response was that our flight was at 8.45. We told him that ours was 9.45, he told us we were wrong and that he travels to Auckland all the time and that the flight is always 8.45. As soon as he said this, I started to panic slightly, as I thought we were going to be late for check-in.

To say that we were in a rush, the taxi driver was driving so slowly – not like normal taxi drivers. When I looked at his dashboard to see what speed he was going, the speedometer wasn’t working, and neither was anything else on the dashboard! This then explained why he was going so slow, but also made me fear for my life slightly.

When we arrived at the airport, we jumped out of the taxi, grabbed our bags and ran into the airport. At the check-in counter, Jodie and James went up first, but I was closely behind them. Jodie turned to me and said that the flight wasn’t until 11.30. I thought she was joking at first, but when I asked my check-in lady, she confirmed it – apparently the plane was delayed leaving Hawaii – just my luck! Although we were given a $30 food and drink voucher, this didn’t make up for the fact that Joe was already waiting in Auckland airport for me and would now have to wait an extra two hours.

Luckily, the time in the airport went quite quickly, so it didn’t feel like we were waiting for too long – even though we were. We didn’t leave at 11.30 though, as we didn’t start boarding until this time.

When we got on the plane, I was sat on a different row to the others, so we said goodbye for the journey. The journey went quite fast, luckily for me, but I think that was because we got food (which I didn’t expect) and they put a couple of episodes on the general screens for us to watch if we wanted to, so I did.

We eventually landed in Auckland at 3pm (two hours behind schedule). As soon as I could, I got off the plane. I power walked it through the airport to the baggage claim and passport control. To my surprise, there was no queue at passport control and I only had to wait about two minutes for my bag to come through. As soon as I saw my bag, I grabbed it and carried on my power walk to the exit. I then hit the queues, as it was chaos when we got to security. There were queues everywhere, as we had to declare any items we had that needed checking, and had to get our bags scanned. This was the longest part of the whole process, but as soon as I got through, I ran around the corner to where Joe was waiting for me!

After our reunion, we had to wait for Jodie and James (I had ditched them as soon as I got off the plane because I couldn’t wait). We were all going to share a taxi together as their accommodation wasn’t far from ours and it worked out cheaper if we shared.

The taxi that we got into was the complete opposite to the one we were in, earlier in the morning, in Nadi. I felt like my whole body had relaxed as soon as I saw Joe again and I could have slept the whole way to the hotel, but I didn’t, I stayed awake and chatted – I hadn’t slept much through excitement the previous nights though.

When we got to the hotel, we were both pretty tired – Joe probably more than me – and it was already almost 5pm, so we spent some time chilling out.

After doing some restaurant research, we decided on a local Indian for dinner. We got ourselves ready and walked to the next street to a place called ‘Little Indian’. It was really cosy inside and the food was really tasty. We both had a curry each and shared some poppadums and were pleasantly surprised at the price of the whole thing – I had heard a lot of stories about how expensive New Zealand can be, but we didn’t think so based on this one meal.

As we had no idea what we wanted to do for the next day – our only full day in Auckland – we did some research when we got back to the hotel. I had been told that there wasn’t much for tourists to do in Auckland and the research seemed to back that up. We looked up a few things that we wanted to do and planned when was best to do them over the day and a half we had.

After the research, we went to bed as we were both very tired at this point, but we knew that we could have a lie in the next day. For me, it was such a nice feeling to know that I can work to my own schedule properly and just enjoy the time that we have.

The next morning, we had a very lazy morning. The plans that we had made didn’t really have any time restrictions, so we decided that we both needed a lie in. We were eventually up and ready at about 10.30, ready for our day’s activity.

After our research, we had decided that we wanted to go to see One Tree Hill – a volcanic landmark in the city. We knew that it was a bit of a distance from where we were staying, so we decided to walk at our own pace, stopping for lunch on the way. As we hadn’t eaten much for breakfast, we were quite hungry soon after we started the journey, but wanted to wait until lunchtime before we stopped.

Just after 12 (about an hour after we had set off), we came to a row of shops and cafes, so we decided to stop. We found a little quirky café so got a table in there. We both ordered a sandwich each, and a portion of chips to share. When the sandwiches came out, they were huge! I only managed half of mine, so I took the rest of it out for a later day.

After lunch, we had a little more energy to carry on our walk. We walked towards the park where One Tree Hill was and had a wander around the park at first. We were initially surprised at how hilly it was in Auckland – no one ever mentioned that when they talked about it, so it was a little bit more challenging than expected. After our wander around the pretty park, we walked towards the hill, which was in the middle.

We started our mini hike up to the top, which wasn’t as far as we first thought. At the top, there was an obelisk which was put there for Maori people. The views from the top were very pretty over the city, even though the park was a bit of a distance from the city. We spent a little bit of time at the top and took some photos all around of the different views, before starting to walk back down.

On the way back down, Joe tried to be a gentleman and hold my hand as it was slippery on the gravel. I was doing fine anyway, but as soon as he grabbed my hand, he skidded down behind me, almost taking me out – I’m not sure who was meant to be supporting who at this point. We got down a lot quicker than we got up though, so when we got down, we decided to stop for an ice cream. We both had an ice cream and sat on the grass in the sunshine, resting our legs for a little bit.

After a little rest, we started to head back to the hotel, as we had to walk for over an hour and a half. Although my legs were very tried when I got back to the hotel, it didn’t seem to take too long. On the way back, we looked for some places that we could go out for dinner and made a note of the restaurants we liked the look of.

Back at the hotel, we had a bit of time to chill out before going back out again. We researched the restaurants that we liked the look of, and got ourselves ready. Even though I was tired from all of the walking, and would have happily stayed in with a takeaway, we went out anyway to an Italian and it was really nice. Neither of us were massively hungry because of the huge lunch we had eaten, so we shared a pizza and some garlic bread.

After dinner, we walked back to the hotel and got an early night: we knew we had to be up early the next day to sort ourselves out before checking out, ready to move on to the next place.

I woke up a little bit earlier than Joe, so that I could shower and start my packing. Once both of us were up, we went for a food shop at the supermarket, as the ‘holiday’ part was over and we knew that we needed to start cooking for ourselves now to save some money. Our visit to the supermarket was a little more rushed than we had planned, as we still had some packing to do and we needed to check out for 10, but we didn’t leave the supermarket until 9.40. Luckily, it was only around the corner, so we didn’t have too far to go.

We got back to the hotel and roughly packed up and managed to check out just after 10. After we had checked out, we needed a couple more minutes in the reception area to sort ourselves out before leaving our bags and heading out for the day.

Our first planned stop for the day, was to go to the Sky Tower in the city centre. It wasn’t too far to walk, and luckily, it was just next to the bus stop that we needed to be at later in the afternoon – so at least we knew where to go.

When we got there, we had a look in the shop downstairs first, before we paid our entry and went up in the lift, to the 51^st floor, where the first observation deck was. In the shop, we watched a couple of videos, which told us different information about New Zealand. Neither of us realised that the north of New Zealand was formed from volcanoes erupting and the lava settling – this did explain the number of hills though. After the videos, we continued to the observation deck, where we had a look around the city at all of the landmarks we could see.

Once we had looked around the first observation deck, we could get a lift up to the 60^th floor to get a better view, if we wanted. We got the lift up and the views were so much better. Although I think it helped that the windows were much cleaner up there too, so we could see much more.

After we had looked around at the different views, we got the lift down to the 50^th floor, to the Sky Tower café. We both ordered a hot chocolate and sat in the café, deciding what to do next. Originally, we had planned to go to the Harbour Bridge after the Sky Tower, but we could see the bridge from where we were and there weren’t any options for us to just walk across the bridge on a footpath, so we decided to give that a miss as we probably had a better view from where we were.

Instead of going to the Harbour Bridge, we went to have a look in some shops for some shoes for me. I didn’t expect the weather in New Zealand to be as chilly as it has been and I only have one pair of scruffy trainers and flip flops or sandals with me, so I thought it would be an idea to look for some more suitable shoes. We had a look around but I did find any that I really wanted and part of me couldn’t justify spending money on things that cannot fit in my bag, so I left it.

Once we finished looking around the shops, we found a little courtyard area where we could eat our lunch. Our lunch consisted of leftover food from the day before: I had the other half of my sandwich and Joe ate some leftover pizza from dinner.

After lunch, we had enough time to walk back to the hotel to collect our bags and chill for a little bit in the hotel lobby, before we had to head towards the bus stop at around 3.15.

The time that we had in Auckland was enough time for what we needed. There really aren’t many touristy things to do, so it was nice to do the few things available, at our own pace. The lie ins and chill time that we had were definitely needed for both of us, so that we were ready to begin exploring more of the country, starting by heading up north to the Bay of Islands.

To travel is to live, Katie x