New Zealand 2013, Sailing through Auckland

Another year, and fortunately for us another trip overseas! This time my partner and I headed off for a very quick week long trip driving around the North Island of New Zealand. This trip was rather different to previous ones I had been on, as we had booked the minimum amount possible – in this case just our flights, hire car and first and last night of accommodation in Auckland. All other accommodation and activities for the rest of the week hadn’t been booked.

To be honest, other than visiting the amazing Auckland Zoo (which I’d visit again) my partner and I couldn’t wait to leave Auckland. Based on the number of buildings you’d expect there to be a lot of people; however, the city was nearly dead and there was a rather strange mix of well, and very poorly maintained areas of the city right next to each other. Maybe we just hit the city at a bad time of the year, but it didn’t matter that much for us because we stayed for only a day to visit the zoo before moving on to our next location.

Some things I learnt during our time in Auckland:

• Immigration is super easy with the new eGates – literally took about 2 minutes
• It is not fun navigating around Auckland. Make sure you get a GPS
• The city itself is rather… dead during January. Don’t expect it to be a busy city this time of year, or for anything to be open after 5pm

Summary

• What we did: Roughly 1.5 days spent at the start and end of our trip in Auckland to wander around the city, visit the zoo (awesome!) and have dinner at the Orbit Restaurant
• Favourite part: Definitely visiting the zoo, it was fantastic
• Best Experience: Relaxing in our accommodation checking out the city lights
• Worst Experience: A real toss up with the huge amount of issues we had trying to get to Auckland in the first place (thanks Virgin), and attempting to navigate in an unfamiliar city on crazy highways with just a basic map
• Must See Attraction: Auckland Zoo
• Next stop: Auckland Zoo!