The flight over was thirteen hours butthe in flight games, namely Who wants to be a millionaire?' kept usentertained! Thankfully our mate Graeme (who emigrated there 5 or soyears ago) picked us up at 4am from the airport and we headed overto where he and his parents live for breakfast; cereal with milk!! Ohhow I have missed decent breakfasts! We then got sorted out andfreshened up before going straight out to the volcano located byAuckland; Rangitoto. We got the ferry out which only takes abouttwenty minutes and had great views back to Auckland harbour. We thenclimbed straight to the top of Rangitoto as we only had a few hoursbefore we needed to be back in the city for our lunch reservation atthe Sky Tower!
When we reached the summit we could seethe crater which was covered with trees as is most of the volcano.The volcano is dormant and clearly with the amount of vegetation ithasn't erupted in some time! After a few photos we headed back to thecity on the ferry for lunch. We went up and had a look from theobservation level and took some pictures before heading up the therevolving restaurant to have a really good lunch. We then caught upon some much needed rest before having a takeaway and a few beerswith Graeme and his folks in the evening.
Our second day we spent the morningshopping as I wanted to get some running trainers and the stories Boband Caroline had told us rang true! We had heard how Kiwis seem toget the prices wrong for stuff. I had chosen some trainers to buy,then as I went to queue up I noticed a sale stand with a good pair ofrunners. I asked them to undo the security tag holding them togetherso I could try running in them and the guy then took them to the tilland came back and said they were 25 dollars less than the price onthe sale tag. Needless to say I did not argue with the man! I thenasked another shop assisstant to find me the cheapest pair of shorts they had. She did so,then said the shorts were an old version so instead of the advertised30 percent off she gave me them half price without me even asking fora discount! I also brought a hat, and that plus the shorts andtrainers were less than half the price of first pair I was going toget, what a result!
Later on we went to Howick beach andwent out on Bob's (Graeme's Dad) sea kayak. John and I paddled quitefar out and decided to go around a buoy and then come back in. Onlywhen we got to the buoy we found it was a dead sheep floating along! Very amusing aswe had been told there were no sheep in Auckland! We then decided we had exertedourselves enough and got some beers and sat in Graeme's hot tub foran hour or so! In the evening we hit the Viaduct quay, where thereare lots of good bars with live music. We had a few beers, including5 free pints for just walking past a bar! Kiwis love to give outdiscounts!
The next morning I went for a run andgot lost on way back from the beach! I ended up running for 1 hourand 15mins! After that we headed out and picked up our camper van wewere going to travel down New Zealand in and a big load of food toput in it! The paint job has a joker and pack of cards on! It is anautomatic and dead easy to drive. Graeme cooked us a good steakdinner before we headed south to Rotorua. Trip down was ok despitethe bad weather and we found a place to camp for free no problems!There is 'free camping' in New Zealand, which basically means you canpark up your wagon and sleep in it for free in most places unless itstates otherwise. So we should be able to save some pennies for doingfun things!
