Kia Ora, Auckland!

Auckland - the City of Sail

At local time 04:00, our flight touched down at Auckland International Airport ahead schedule. With our finger crossed, we went through the immigration check point with words from the Changi Airport ground staff about the case where tourists from Singapore/Malaysia not allowed into NZ as a result of insufficient supporting document. Guess what, we were only asked briefly about the reason to enter NZ, and the places that we planned to visit and that's it. We were given 3-month tourist visa to stay in NZ. Nope, we were not asked to show any money or travel document or hotel information. Nada. It's relatively easier to enter to Singapore I supposed!

Auckland airport was already buzzing with activities and crowds despite the wee hour in the morning. Most shops were already opened. There were few free online access terminals and an i-site. I-site is the official tourist information centre in NZ. It is usually the first place tourists goes to upon arrival at any cities/towns in NZ. You could get almost all information needed at i-site.

We took the airbus from terminal to Auckland city, which was the cheapest transport to city area unless you are travelling in large group, then perhaps the airport shuttle would be a better choice. Transportation in NZ is generally expensive. A short journey from airport to city (around 20km) cost us $14 per person with the $1 discount voucher (available online to be printed or from the Auckland city guide book/brouchure available foc from i-site.

A much desserted Auckland city on Easter Sunday

We alighted at city centre, looking for backpackers accommodation to check in. It was Easter Sunday and also due to the early hour, the entire Auckland city looked so abandoned. With all our baggage and exhausted from the long distant flight, we were not very mobile. We checked-in to the second backpackers we asked on Queenstreet.It was early and the check-in hour was after 2pm. However, the friendly staff were nice enough to allow us checking into the room (and asked us not to tell anyone..shhh...) One of the advantage to travel during off-peak as more rooms were available.

After checking into our twin room, we had showers and went out to explore the city. However there were nothing much as it's still public holidays. Personally, I didn't find Auckland city any much different from cities in UK/US except it's called the city of sail due to the large number of yachts that sail on Auckland's Waitemata Harbour. The city most prominant landmark was the 1076 ft high Sky Tower. You can see it almost wherever you went in Auckland city.

Sky Tower viewed from park

Sky Tower viewed from city center





Sky Tower viewed from below


Nevertheless, we were on mission to get a local simcard as it would be easier for us to contact with our family as well as the farmstay host and Koo, yd's friend in Christchurch. We found a post on the message board at our backpackers that someone was selling second hand sim card for $10. The price for a new prepaid sim card is $35 (or $45 if bought from Airport terminal) inclusive of $5 calling credit. The guy was an Israeli who was going to leave NZ the night.

After that, we wandered around the City of Sail, had lunch by the sky tower, lying under the tower, watching a couple of people jumping down from 1000 over ft high (which we didn't do because we were saving our budget for the sky-diving!). I have to mentioned this, the first food I had in NZ was this sausage roll we bought from one of the convenient stores, it was well worth the money in terms of the satiety it provided. I bought it for breakfast and by lunch, i continued gnawing on the leftover and still couldn't finished it until late afternoon. That was indeed one bloody filling sausage roll!!!

The most filling sausage roll ever!

Notice the little black dot on the left? That's one daring soul jumping down the tower

Later we went to the Historical Victoria Park Market. There were shops and stalls selling anything from art craft, jewelry, painting, photos, etc. However I didn;t find it that exciting after all. Later in our journey, I found in general the art craft and souvenirs were a lot nicer in South Island instead. However as we didn't really travel much in North Island, I could be biased.

Inside Victoria Park Market

As the jet-lag started kicking in, I found myself extremely tired and sleepy I could almost lie down anywhere and fall asleep. We went back to the backpackers and took a couple hours of nap. After which we went out again on another mission, to arrange transport to get to Taupo tomorrow. We tried searching through the notice boards on various backpackers to see if anybody was looking for travel companion. It's pretty common for travellers who has a car to post notice asking for companion to the same destination to share the petrol. However we didn't have much luck probably because of the timing. Most people had left the city days before. We decided to take a bus and was looking for the cheapest rate. Lucky for us we saw a bus around the city by a company called nakedbus.com. It turned out to have cheaper fare compared to intercity coach.

For dinner, we had some very nice kebab from the kebab restaurant beside our backpackers with couple bottles of Monteith lager, a NZ beer. I wasn't a fan of beer but surprisingly I found few local beer very delicious, among which were Monteith's and Tui. No wonder NZ is having an increasing drinking problem within the nation. They should simply stop brewing such nice beer!