Arrival in New Zealand, Auckland - January 2010

Work

I have spent the majority of January and the beginning of February working in a turkish restaurant called Mecca. It was a small cafe styled restaurant where I worked as a runner. Thankfully Flora and I both found jobs within 3 days of arriving in New Zealand! The people I worked with were great but the job sucked! Flora and I decided that Auckland was not the place for a backpacker to work. We will move onto Queenstown to look for work there, the next blog entry will be very exciting!

Working for accommodation

Just like in Sydney last February and March, we managed to get ourselves set up in the Base hostel in Auckland making beds for 4 hours a day 5 days a week in exchange for a free bed. We lived in a four bed dorm with Ella and Steph which changed into just Steph, Steph and Mike, just Mike, and Jamie and Mike (can you figure that one out...!). It was a great month, working 9-1 then sleeping most afternoons, then working in the evening at Mecca then socialising with work and hostel mates before heading to bed, sometimes not until 6am. We worked with a team of permanent housekeepers who were great fun. Most mornings us as backpackers were barely awake after only having a couple of hours sleep, but that just made it more fun!

Trips

Flora's cousin Ben took us out on his boat on the Auckland Harbour our first weekend here where we did some fishing. My first cast caught an awesome snapper, unfortunately too small to keep. Flora and I both had the opportunity to drive the boat which was good fun!

Big Day Out - Music festival. This was a great day, the weather was great and we saw Kasabian, Dizziee Rascal, Calvin Harris, Dead Prez, Muse and Groove Armada. It went on from 11am to 11.30pm and we were definitely knackered by the end of the day!

Phia Beach, Nicole (camp 2005&6) drove Steph and I out to this amazing beach for an afternoon. The World Junior Surf Championships were being held while we were there. Unfortunately, the good surf was quite far from the beach so we couldn't really see what was going on.

Just before leaving Auckland, we visited Auckland Museum, a museum with great exhibits, but the layout baffled both of us. There was no chronological order to the exhibits. It was very interesting however, and we even experienced a volcano explosion, if there ever was one in Auckland harbour.

Nights out

As most of our time during the day was spent on sleeping or working at the hostel or our other job, nights out were almost every night during January. The hostel was on top of a bar called Globe which is where most people went, and where Flora and I would end up after wherever we went to with work people after work. I spent most of my time in Bubble Champagne Lounge (Mecca's bar) and foxes, the bar next door where we had discount! Flora spent her time in the Belgian Beer Cafe where she worked. We would always end up bumping into each other at Globe on our way back to the hostel around 3am. Some great nights and great memories from this month of different living compared to the way of life we experienced in Australia.

Future Plans

We have now left Auckland and are traveling around New Zealand with the Kiwi experience on route to Queenstown. Activities that we will be participating in on the way include white water rafting, black water rafting, one of the best one day hikes in the world, glacier walking and so much more. Check out next month for how we get on!

Photos

Auckland in a month