We had a really nice day yesterday in Auckland and today we are off to the south island of New Zealand. In Auckland, we were fortunate to have a beautiful day, so we took a 15 minute ferry ride from downtown to Devonport, just across the bay. Our photos of the beaches were from Devonport and Colin actually went swimming! The sun was so hot that, after just 30 minutes in the sun with my laptop on my lap, I ended up with some pretty dramatic tan lines. We didn’t bring sunscreen with us because we wanted to buy it here, but I did have a small package that I used for my face. So, Colin is beat red today and my skin is feeling the slight itch from the sun. All stores and restaurants were closed yesterday, with just a few exceptions. We ended up having a chicken, avocado and bacon pizza for $21 NZD at a waterfront restaurant called “Traffic.” The pizza was okay, except for the overpowering amount of pepper on it. I’m hoping to eat a lot of avocados and kiwifruit here since in the U.S. this is the place they come from.
After dinner, we went back to our hotel for the night. We had some plans to hang out in the common area and meet people, but it only took about 15 minutes for us to realize we just wanted to go to bed! It was amazing to sleep a full 8 hours after such a long flight, and we woke up at 4:15 NZ time, 30 minutes before the alarm was to go off. Our hotel was on a very hilly road, but had a nice view of Auckland’s Sky Tower. I never realized how hilly Auckland is. Colin said it reminds him of San Francisco and I agree. It is also very clean and modern. It’s too bad everything was closed so we couldn’t get a full appreciation of its food and culture.
Our flight this morning is at 6:45am to Christchurch. It should be just over an hour and we will proceed to get our rental car. Since it’s another holiday today – Boxing Day – we had a few problems with the car rental reservation, so we hope it all works out okay. When I looked up Boxing Day on Wikipedia, it appears to be a day of gift exchanging and I think all the stores should be open. I saw advertisements in the newspaper that make it seem like our “Black Friday” – but NZ style. We’ll go shopping to get some of the essentials for the next 12 days – food, water, sunscreen, a cell phone, etc. From Christchurch we have a 5-6 hour drive to Mount Cook planned, with a night booked at a hostel there. Weather in the south island seems pretty unpredictable, especially near the mountains, so we hope the plan to go south first works out for us!
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