Auckland

We arrived in Auckland around lunchtime and spend a good few hours getting through customs.  They don't like you bringing anything in and we had to declare our wooden swords from Fiji and our dry noodles. Quite a faff really.  We took a shuttle into the city centre and found our hostel.  After settling in we went on a walk round the centre and found somewhere to have a burger.  Aucklands a nice city but is a more business city than anything else. We had a quiet chilled night at the hostel as they have free meals in the evening. 

On our second day we went on a free walking tour of the city organised by our hostel.  We saw the harbour, sky tower, parks, art galleries and some shops. It was interesting to learn more about the city, although I can't now remember anything they said! We had lunch at a veggie restaurant called Revive which was really nice. After wandering around the city some more we headed back to the hostel. There was a pub quiz that night and we were pretty excited, after 3 weeks of nothing in Fiji, that's what happens!  So we had dinner and sat down waiting for everyone else. After about half an hour sitting in an empty bar it was clear it wasn't happening so we went to play some cards.

The weather in Auckland was horrendous.  Windy and rainy. The two things we wanted to do; Mount Eden and the sky tower, we needed good weather.  So we were stuck with not an awful lot to do. So we went to the cinema and watched 22 Jump street which was really good.  Followed by a burrito and it was a great day.

Our last day in Auckland was spent mostly looking around the shops. It became clear that we didn't quite have the right clothes for New Zealand so we bought a few jumpers in preparation.

The next day around 10 we headed to the Escape office to pick up our new van. They spent ages going through insurance and maintenance but all we wanted to do was look at what van we got. They all have different patterns and pictures on the side. We got a good one.  It was one based on South America.  We called him Carlos and headed North.