We Come From A Land Down Under

Posted by Emily

Well, we have successfully made it to New Zealand and so far are having a very nice time. After almost 28 hours of travel (including a flight from the south of Thailand to Bangkok, on which I puked and I'm not even a puker, and almost 8 hours in the Bangkok airport waiting for our next flight to depart), we arrived in Auckland, took a shuttle to our hostel and proceed to sleep for about 25 hours. We were very exciting people that day!

The rest of the time we spent walking around the city and speaking English, because we can here! It's amazing how much easier that makes thing! We visited the Sky Tower, the tallest building in the southern hemisphere I believe (you can even bungee jump off of it!), the Victoria Market, which turned out to be just a bunch of shops (there are flea markets on the weekend) and attempted a walking tour of the city. Although they claimed that the walking tour was easy to follow, I think we proved them wrong! The map was hard to read at places and the roads were supposed to be marked ever kilometer, but weren't. BUT we did get to go up a road called "Emily Place" and take my picture by some signs that said Emily on them. The part of the walking tour that we did do was quite nice. It led us from the harbor downtown into some older neighborhoods and through the university campus (very lovely!). It would have led us across the city through parks and the luck but we were getting crabby after quite a long day and decided to go home.

Yesterday we decided to take a day trip out of Auckland to a suburb across the bay (12 min ferry ride) called Devenport, a very lovely city that from what I can tell, must also be pretty wealthy! Lots of beautiful seaside property. We did another walking tour there but this one was much easier to follow and led us up 2 old volcanoes (just grass-covered hills now) that offered beautiful views of the city and surrounding sea despite the cold wind that was blowing on top. We warmed up with some tea and chai at a cafe and then headed back. The wind was picking up and rain was starting to fall. Not very ideal weather for exploring a little town but it was a nice day none the less.