We left the wonderful world of Australia to fly to our 5^th Island on this trip, the land of the Kiwi’s New Zealand. We spent the week getting use to the city, meeting friends that we have here. Trying to find the elusive Kiwi bird and learning about the all blacks.

Day 133 (12/01/11) Welcome to Auckland

We woke up early had breakfast and took the shuttle from in front of the hotel to the airport. So far everything is as sweet as, then the problems start. As we are checking into our flight we are told that we are allowed only 1 bag of hold luggage and not 2 as we had thought. So we had to pay 80$ for the extra bag we had, we did not have a choice anyway, we wanted to take the things with us, but if we had known we would have tried to hid some of the extra KG’s somewhere. We then past through the border control no worries, had a coffee and waiting for our flight to be called, but it was not. We found out our flight was last because the airplane was not at the gate at the time of departure. We checked online to see what time the incoming flight was arriving and that is how we found out that our airplane was 2 hours late. We waited, when we airplane arrived we all ran to the gate eager to get on our way and catch up on the delay, but no we were all loaded onto the plan, but we made to wait another hour while they did safety checks before the flight finally took off, which was after the time we should have arrive in Auckland. We arrived at Auckland very tired after a very long day. We found the shuttle that took us to our hotel; it was easy as was getting into the country. About one hour after landing we were in our hotel room. The hotel is in the centre of down town, just a short walk from everything, a very good location at a reasonable price.

Day 134 (13/01/11) Administration time

After sleeping in, and spending part of the morning in bed watching TV, we get up and go out in to the Big Little City that is Auckland. The city has 1.4 million people and the whole country has around 5 million people. It is said that there are 5 times as many sheep as they are people in New Zealand, so that means a lot of good lamb chops and woolly sweatersJ  But I have digressed, the first thing we had to do today was make an application for our tax file number, this will allow us to work and is done very simply at the post office by filling in our form and giving a photocopy of our passport and driving licence. We should have our numbers back next week. We then went to open a bank account that was very easy and completed in less than 10 minutes, without needing 100’s of documents proving who were are our enormous deposits. Shopping was next on the list we got  some food for the room and a few all important beers. We stayed in for dinner, watching TV and just relaxing after a very productive and efficient first day.

Day 135 (14/01/11) People we know here

Today we discovered the library of Auckland and its free internet and great books; I can already feel this is going to become one of my favourite places in the city. Our first stop today was the Hilton hotel, where one of my friends works. She did not know we were coming so she was very surprised and happy to see us. We chatted for an hour, listening to the tips she shared with us about Auckland. We also got a leads for jobs in Queenstown, it seems that the Hilton hotel is opening a new hotel and looking for people. So far things in Auckland are going very well for us. We promised to send our CV’s to her on Monday morning. We then went and got ourselves a mobile phone line, again, we did not have to prove our life history to get a phone line, it was more like, ‘so you want a mobile line? Here you go’ In less than 48 hours here we have applied for a tax file number, opened a bank account and have a phone number. Not bad, its time to go down to the pub and discover how the Kiwi’ spend a Friday night.

Day 136 (15/01/11) Looking for an Apartment

It is time for us to find somewhere to live for a while, having spent the last 4 months on the road we are looking to stay in Auckland for a while and work, and for that we need a place to live that is cheaper than staying in hotels. We went to visit some real estate agencies but to stay in one of their apartments we need to stay a minimum of 3 months and as we are planning on going to work for the ski season in Queenstown and don’t know when we will be starting work there we need something a little more flexible. So we chose to live in a flat share, we are taking over the room of Bryan a Indonesian guy that has just finished his studies and is going back home for 6 weeks to see his family. We found the room we wanted in less than a day, in the location we wanted at a very reasonable price so we are very happy with the progress we have been making since we have come to Auckland. Things have been going smoothly for us.

Day 137 (16/01/11) Sunday working on CV’s

Travelling without working for 4 months has been great; we have not looked for jobs or anything since we left our jobs in Paris at the end of the summer. It has been great we have done and seen so much that we could never have done without taking time off work. But all good things have to come to an end, now that we have found a place to stay in Auckland it is time for us to work on our CV’s so we can look for jobs. We are looking for temp work in Auckland before moving downs for the ski season in Queenstown. It was very hard to think in a professional way today and update my CV. It is like the hard working part of my brain has fallen asleep. Time to wake it up!

Day 138 (17/01/11) Davenport

After sending our CV’s to the Hilton Hotel this morning and paying a deposit for the room we are going to rent, we wanted to do something a bit more fun and tourist like. So we headed down to the wharf and caught the ferry to Davenport, which is on the north side of Auckland. The sky looked grey, but we were hopping it would not rain too much. The ferry took 10 minutes and we were treated with amazing views of the city of Auckland from the bay. Davenport is a nice rich area with big houses on the beach front. Just as we got off the ferry we were treated to some great Auckland weather, it started to rain. We walked under the rain a while until we found the navel museum. The Navel museum was free to enter and portrayed New Zealand’s part in all the wars of the world.

We then walked up to new head which is a park in Davenport; we climbed up the hill and enjoyed the amazing views of the little islands in the bay. It was a very nice and relaxing day out.

Day 139 (18/01/11) Moving to the Jucy hotel

Our one week in the hotel down town Queens Street has come to an end and it is time for us to move. We moved to another hotel for 2 nights as we are moving into our apartment on Thursday. It was raining as we left the hotel we were staying in to walk up a hill to the new Jucy hotel. The problem was we were carrying our backpacks and the rest of the luggage we had with us, so up a hill with 30kgs on our backs was a bit challenging, add in the wind and the rain, we were totally exhausted when we reach the Jucy Hotel. We spent the afternoon in the library, catching up with news from around the world.