The beginning of the end: Auckland

Looking out the window of the plane as I came into Auckland my first impression of New Zealand was of rolling green hills. Getting through the airport was a bit tricky upon landing as they take customs pretty seriously here in NZ. Bringing food in is frowned upon so you just gotta be careful. I got through ok, I even had a chat to one of the guys working there about ireland, and then I hopped on the bus into the city centre. I made it to the hostel ok and dumped my gear. By this stage it was late in the afternoon and the weather was pretty miserable so I didnt do a whole lot. I went for a bit of a walk and had a bite to eat then chilled in the hostel for a bit before getting to bed early. On my first full day in Auckland I visited the Magic office to arrange my travel for the coming 4 weeks. I have to get to Queenstown to fly home so I should have enough time to see the majority of the country. The biggest problem would be the bus times since they only run 2 or 3 times a week. It would mean either staying in places for either one night or 3 most of the way. I worked out a schedule that should let me see most of the country though. This coupled with a trip to the supermarket took up most of the day to be honest. Then in the late afternoon I was due to meet up with a guy from couchsurfing. His name is Otto and he has been in NZ for most of his life. He is Samoan originally but came over when he was a kid. He picked me up in the city centre and we went to a bottle shop to grab some beers. The plan was to drive to the beach and drink them there but there are new laws which ban drinking in such places so that idea was out the window. We went for a walk on the beach and visited a few other places before catching a meal. All in all it was a cool evening and it was good to chat to one of the locals. Then he dropped me back to my hostel where I was just in time to go on a pub crawl which I soon got roped into. It was one of the slowest pub crawls ive ever been on (4 bars) but we made the most of it....

My next day in Auckland was my last for the time being. I was off to the Bay of Islands for 2 days before I came back here again to start my NZ trip properly. I spent this day doing bugger all really since the weather was so crap. I had a bit of a wander but the weather soon had me running for shelter back at my hostel where I caught up on my blogging and a bit of reading. Auckland is a pretty boring place for the most part especially in crap weather. I also got my gear together for my trip north where hopefully the weather would be warmer!