Auckland. Day One.

4 flights, 10,000 miles, 36 hours of travel, and 55 hours of temporal relocation later – and we’re here! Our flights were something of a nightmare, what with delays, redirected luggage, airport navigation, and last-minute runs through international security to arrive at the gate right at boarding time. However, I’d have to say we got pretty lucky. All three of our bags arrived with us, which was something we both doubted would happen. And we spent three hours watching dawn break over Fiji yesterday!


When we got into our hotel room yesterday around 2pm we were both totally wiped out. After much-anticipated showers and a quick burger at a pub down the street we both passed out at around 4:30 – and proceeded to sleep through the night. Up and out early this morning (about 12 hours of sleep proved to be our max, despite the fact that it was still hours before dawn when we woke), we had a leisurely breakfast and stroll around the CBD, collecting numerous activity brochures along the way. It’s nice travelling with no real agenda and no shortage of time. We wanted to take some time to adjust to the new time zone and unwind from all the travel, so since it was a rainy day we hopped on a tour bus and cruised all around the city.

Auckland is a fairly large and sprawling city, though the CBD is very compact. The rest consists of various suburbs and neighborhoods, spread over a lush, hilly land. We got great views from a couple of high points, including Mt. Eden, an extinct volcano and the highest point in the city. It’s interesting to see chickadees and small sparrows hopping around next to tall black birds with red-crested heads which look like something out of a National Geographic magazine. Many trees are familiar to us, but there are also many new ones. Really, there’s just an amazing variety. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll take a stroll around one of the parks near us. Or maybe go island hopping. Depends on the weather. :)


For dinner we got ramen at a tiny place around the corner from our hotel. It’s hard to beat a huge bowl of hot soup after a long day of exploration and rain. Tomorrow we’ll keep wandering the city, and maybe get ourselves some phones. And soon, a car! After that, it’s the open road.