I've arrived !

Yep, I'm finally here after 12 months in the planning.

On 7th September I boarded a Singapore Airlines 747 at Manchester and following stops at both Zurich and Singapore, I landed on Kiwi soil on 9th September.

Singapore airport was amazing, the only airport in the World with a swimming pool. The shops, the bars, the cinema, the lounges, amazing ! I had booked 12 hours at the transit hotel and literally 5 minutes after disembarking the aeroplane, I was climbing into bed for a good nights, erm, mornings sleep. Singapore Airlines were very good and surprisingly had a TV selection that was worth watching. I didn't need to get my personal DVD out once in 23 hours.



I landed in Auckland on Saturday morning into appalling, some might say, British weather. Leaden skies, biting wind and horizontal rain and this continued for the next 3 days !! Typical !



I'm staying in Botany Downs on the South East side of Auckland until the end of the month but will need to arrange a longer term rental before then. Botany is a shoppers paradise with every conceivable shop here you can imagine.



I bought the Bill Bryson book "Life & Times of the Thunderbolt Kid" which incidentally, I well recommend, fantastic stuff as usual from BB. I read it in 2 days flat. When I bought it, the man in the shop gave me $10 discount for no other reason than I was making a purchase !! How cool is that? I'll go there again. This wasn't some little one man shop either, this was a National chain !



I can't really be doing with very commercialised places like Botany if I'm honest, I prefer things a little more rural myself, so will look for a less commercialised area to settle into. My gaffe is great though, all the mod cons, tastefully decorated, spacious and comfortable !





Auckland itself is a bit of a contrast - as the pictures above and below this paragraph show ! On one hand it's a big city (in NZ terms) with lots of people, traffic, concrete and as all cities, not that attractive for the most part but once away from the CBD (Central Business District) the traffic ceases, the concrete disappears, the people are scarce in number and the whole place opens out into countryside and beaches with pretty cottages and a village feel. I was especially taken with Newmarket, Epson, Mount Eden, St Helliers, Parnell and Mission Bay, around which many of the pictures were taken. The others were from the top of the Sky Tower.



I haven't made it to many of the Auckland suburbs yet but I'll get round to them in due course.

On Tuesday I had some business to attend to concerning my job and following that I went to the beach at Mission Bay as I'd seen it the previous day and it's stunning.



Tuesday was also the first day since my arrival when it wasn't pouring. The temperature was around 20 degrees and there was barely a cloud in the sky for most of the day. I sat on the wall and had freshly 'caught and cooked' fish and chips from "The Fish Pot". Delicious !



Wednesday was spent sorting things and lazing about which was then followed by a drive around the area passing once again through Mission Bay but this time passing through Parnell as well and then I hit the traffic in Auckland.

Thursday was Zoo day ! If anybody has ever seen the programme "The Zoo" which airs on Sky Travel in the UK, well Auckland Zoo is the location for this docu-soap about the day to day running of the zoo, the keepers and the animals.

I had a great day at the zoo, the highlight was seeing the Elephants on their daily walkabout. This is where the keepers take them out of their pen and through the zoo past the startled onlookers !



The Cheetah's were almost fully grown. They had been born to wild stock in South Africa and brought over as babies, a story followed closely by the TV programme but as you can see from the pic, the cheetah's aren't babies any longer !


The Oranguan's were great and they have a new baby there. I went to the Native NZ fauna display as well where they had amongst others a Tui, a Kiwi and bizarrely a rat !



Anyway, what had been a beautiful day, weatherwise, turned very quickly into a torrential downpour around 4pm and I decided that enough was enough and went home.



I was hoping to go whale watching today (Friday) but the boat is having maintenance for a couple of days so I've been booked onto tomorrow's sailing instead.



I'm really looking forward to it and hopefully we'll get to see some. Auckland isn't really the best place to see whales, Kaikura in the South Island is the undisputed king of the whale watch locations due to the huge numbers of whales that pass by every year. Auckland by contrast, has very few



but it is possible to see Orca (Killer whales) and Brydes Whales, which grow to around 50 feet in length, We should also be able to spot both Common and Bottle Nose dolphin which inhabit the waters around Auckland all year long as do the Blue Penguins.

Things I've learned this week:-

1. New Zealand is a land far, far away
2. The weather is erm, changeable
3. Bill Bryson is still my favorite writer
4. Kiwi's are very friendly people
5. NZ TV is a bit rubbish so thank god for Sky

Must crack on, been writing this in bed on Friday morning and I really need to get up.

John