Day 3-4 - Auckland

Friday 23 July, 10:47pm NZST

What a busy couple of days it's been! I'm writing this just before I go back to my B&B, sleep, and then leave for my plane. Last 12 hours in the Southern Hemisphere until October...

I couldn't sleep after finishing my last post on Wed night, so took a long walk at about 2am (Thursday morning) around the city, basically following Customs Street to the harbour bridge (which has no pedestrian access, sadly), up Jacob's Ladder (nowhere near as long as Perth's at Cliff Street or Burt Way, but still tiring nonetheless!) and back along Victoria Street. I was amazed at how many things in the city were still open. Ended up eating a quite diverse combination for $8 at an Arab kebab shop in Customs Street with some British backpackers.

Woke up late on Thursday, and had decided to go on a volcano tour of Auckland with a geologist at 1pm, so didn't do much other than get wet while trying to find food. I have, however, now acquired a sling bag! This has greatly assisted me in getting around.

The approximately four-hour tour, run by Murray Baker of GeoTours, would have to be one of the best tours in value for money terms that I've ever had. I hope to get up some of my pics soon but there is some good ones and a review on this page. Auckland's metropolitan area is literally built on a field of volcanoes, many of which are still in a technical sense active, and there's plenty to see - but it's easy to just see these things and entirely miss the significance of what they mean. It's also easy to forget that volcanos aren't just mountains with craters in them (although plenty exist and this tour took me to a fair few of them) - there are all kinds of craters and formations which are just as important. I would highly recommend this tour to anyone, especially if you like being an independent traveller like myself and find yourself in a place where you can study up close the incredible power lying just underneath our earth's crust.

After the tour's conclusion I met up with Mark, who I also met on the net in 1994. Unlike Shannon, however, we haven't been in contact in the time in between, so it was a wide-scale catch-up. We have both spent considerable periods in the IT industry and had great fun trading stories about our experiences.

On the way home, I met a busker named James who plays acoustic guitar and sings across the road on Queen Street near Wellesley, just outside the Civic Theatre. First busker I'd come across in my time in Auckland - surprising as Melbourne, Perth and Sydney all have heaps - but he was seriously good. Any of us around at the time got to hear acoustic versions of RATM's "Killing In The Name", Metallica's "Wherever I May Roam", and songs by Pearl Jam, Sepultura, Simon & Garfunkel, Weezer, Incubus, and a range of others. After he was finished we walked back to Britomart and had a good chat.

One thing I have always loved about travelling is the opportunity to meet a range of people, and I've certainly done that here. Auckland is a very friendly and outgoing city, and I do hope to come here again soon - it's so easy to thanks to the new airlines opening up between Australia and NZ, and the fact NZ Immigration treats me like a local here.

Today was boring from the blog-report point of view - I wanted to get some information from the library while here, and spent some time doing that. Afterwards, I went up the Sky Tower, stopping on the way to watch some gravity-defying bungying on Albert Street. They had these two pylons mounted at about 80-100m with these straps coming down, and this ball thing which two people could sit in. It was psycho - especially in the middle of the city!

The Sky Tower observation area reminded me a great deal of the Rialto Towers in Melbourne. It was great - I'd waited for a clear day to do this, and was glad I did, as the views were fantastic. I got some great shots of One Tree Hill and the Devonport area. One slightly different thing the shape of the building allowed them to do was to put some small areas of glass flooring in at the edges. I do not recommend standing on these and looking down if your stomach is at all delicate.

After this, it was back to the B&B (Aspen House), where I socialised with some other travellers - some people from northern NSW and a guy from Florida - watched an episode of the Simpsons, and ate microwaved Watties vegies and the remains of a baguette I'd bought earlier at Foodtown - a fitting closing dinner to my Auckland experience.

Despite the traffic and the steep hills, I am going to miss this place when I fly away tomorrow. It's been an adventure and I've enjoyed nearly all of it. Honolulu, here I come...