Almost out of Auckland....

Yesterday was our day to walk, apparently. We decided to do the Coast to Coast walk, recommended by the Lonely Planet.....hmmm, not recommended! We trudged on for hours following yellow and blue arrows - the yellow was supposed to be going North, the blue South. Perhaps it is something to do with the forces down here in the Southern Hemisphere, but the arrows were VERY confusing! So, we branched out and did our own walk......the destination was an older part of Auckland called Onehunga (pronounced oney-unga, but we like One-Hunga ourselves!). Anyway, we found out later that this is the place you go if you want to steal a car, get mugged etc. Nice. We did meet a very pleasant fellow by the name of Nigel, who gave us some good information about the local area. He's a saddle maker, would you believe, and he lives just outside of Auckland. He has invited us to stop off at his farm on the way back down from the Bay of Islands for a cold beer, which was very kind of him.

Sore, tired, blistered feet meant that we had to get the bus back to Ponsonby so we rewarded ourselves by going for a wee drink - this was supposed to be an ETOH free day. Well, that didn't work! We got chatted up by some bankers (The National Bank of New Zealand partially funded our evening - thank you!) and they gave us some excellent advice about where we should go once we get our van. They left and we were joined by a couple of lawyers, who funded the rest of our evening. So nice to meet the locals! Not feeling too great this morning......

Auckland is a neat city with a million cafes and bars. It actually reminds us of Vancouver, same sort of feel. The houses are all different, so that makes is way more interesting. We actually came across a house with banana trees in the garden! The flowers are exotic, the trees are plentiful....and is has only rained once for a short time!

We are having an awesome time and are quite looking forward to packing up the van and heading north today. We will do our best to update this as often as we can.

Lots of love,

J&E