Kiwi Fruit anyone ?

Greetings from New Zealand,

Well we finally made it to NZ, Auckland to be exact and so far it's been fantastic. We're staying in a hostel right in the heart of the city centre and it's great to be back in civilization where you don't need to get on a subway or a bus or a scooter to go anywhere. The kiwi's are amazingly friendly, coming through immigration was a joy (well apart from our flight just arriving after a Korean plane and having to wait for ages as the Koreans tried to work out what was going on), the clerk at the immigration counter smiled and was actually friendly - this is a first in all my years of flying. We had only planned on staying in Auckland for 3 days, but we've extended that to 6 simply because we like it here.

Naturally there's a few stories to tell so far. On day 2 in Auckland we noticed that we had some new neighbours in the hostel we are staying in (each floor is sectioned of into smaller areas that have either rooms / dorms with a shared kitchen, shower and toilets - this way you're only sharing with a smaller group rather than all the masses in the hostel - a cool idea). The family from hell, yes a family in a youth hostel. So you have mum and dad in their late forties and their 2 teenage spotty burberry wearing kids (one fat and one skinny), the Dad has a couple of earrings in and is wearing clothes that you would normally find on a twenty something, but the best thing is that he has a laptop with him that he set's up in the communal sharing area and starts to blast out techno music full pelt (notice I'm saying the Dad and not the teenage brats), yup hard core dance music. His nickname from then on was of course "Techno Dad" and boy did you know when he was about because he spent most of the 2 days they were here arguing, shouting and physically abusing his family. Just yesterday we were awoken to hear things crashing and someone being walloped and actually thrown out of the common shared area, we didn't mind though as we had to get up early anyway to change our room in the hostel and we've not seen a TV in so long it was great entertainment listening to them going at it. But sadly it only lasted for about 20 mins and then they were gone never to be seen again. Oh and of course in case none of you had guessed they were of course English.

Anyway what have we been doing in Auckland then ? The first few days we just took it easy, doing some exploring of the surrounding areas and so on. We're close to one of the harbours so we headed there on Saturday night and had some wonderful food washed down with a fantastic bottle of New Zealand wine (this was Jacquie's first taste of wine in about six weeks so she was positively squealing with excitement and delight - actually so was I it tasted really good). We then ended up in a bar on the wharf for a few more beers. The bars in New Zealand are open until 6 in the morning but seeing as we're old buggers now we only lasted till about 2 before leaving and staggering up the road.


Yesterday we went to Mount Eden, one of the many extinct volcanos that exist in New Zealand. The weather was good so we climbed up to the top and I actually ventured into the crater (not that there was much to see down there), the views of the surrounding Auckland area are magnificent and thankfully the weather was great as well (a refreshing change from Singapore). Auckland is actually a pretty small city so we just walked back into the main city centre and ambled into Albert Park a stunningly tranquil park in the hear of Auckland. Our hostel provides you with a free meal in the evening (more of a little baby portion of a main course, but enough for my sparrow stomach to be happy with) so we tucked into that last night and got chatting to a couple - Brian and Jay. Brian is of course Irish (I swear Jacquie can sniff out her own kind at 1000 paces), Jay is American (Californian to be exact) and they are both doing what we are doing spending a year in New Zealand. We had a great night with them, drinking, sharing stories, drinking, playing pool, drinking. After the bar we were in closed we headed back to the hostel and went up to Jay and Brians common shared area to drink some more - they had some cans of Woodies which is a pre-mixed bourbon and cola drink in a can about the size of a can of lager back home. Jungle juice that stuff i tell you but myself and Brian managed a couple of cans before me and Jacquie decided it was time to head to our own room (this was of course after having a member of staff come and tell us to be quiet as we were making far too much noise, which I guess was true). I think we left at about 2.30 in the morning and I got a craving for a kebab so of me and Jacq's went hunting a kebab shop sadly to no avail (it was a Monday night after all), however I did come across the "White Lady". The White Lady is basically a long catering truck that roams around Auckland late at night serving burgers to drunken people - it's famously renowned in these parts. Chi ching result, one cheese burger later (and it was a damn fine cheeseburger, not the greasy slides of your bun crap you get at a concert in Scotland, but a huge restaurant style cheeseburger) and we were on our way home with bellies full of alcohol and cheese burger after a most enjoyable night.

The Mount Eden crater (if you look closely that's me walking down to it)


Our partners in sauce - Jay and Brian :-


Today we decided it was time to get our mobile phones sorted out with NZ sim cards seeing as we're gonna be here for so long. It was while undertaking what I assumed would be just a simple case of walking in and buying a pay as you go sim card (well it was for Jacquie as she has a slightly older mobile) that I discovered that my Irish mobile phone is actually locked out which means it can only take an O2 Ireland sim card. Buggeration, naturally I enquired in the store about hacking my phone and the guy said that if we went a little up the road we would find a store that could unlock my phone for me, he said the place was a butcher so I took this to mean that it was a bit hit or miss and that the shop may actually break my phone - you know butcher it. I couldn't have been more wrong, the shop that unlocks your phone (illegal though it is to do so) is actually a butcher - yes a shop where meat is sold. You don't believe me check out the picture below. So I managed to get my phone unlocked and we are now proud owners of New Zealand numbers which means we can now both answer out mobiles again without fear of wasting our call credit with roaming charges. Ginger it also means that you can't send me a gizzillion text messages just to waste my credit ya cheeky git.

Check out the "Phone Butcher" :-


Our plan is to spend another day in Auckland and then head further to the North of the North Island, probably to the Bay of Islands.

Oh and i've just uploaded some new pics as well. You can check out the full Auckland set so far by clicking here

Stay tuned

Al and of course Jacquie