Auckland, our final stop in New Zealand

Auckland and our final thoughts on New Zealand

Sunset in Mangere

I'd like to say that I have lots of things to say about Auckland and the exciting adventures that we had there, but I unfortunately don't. Truth be told we were quite tired after all our adventures in Hobbiton and Rotorua. We stayed in a place on the outskirts of Auckland called Mangere.

Mangere was a little confusing as it wasn't clear whether we were actually in Auckland or just another place, but that is where the airport is, which was our main reason for coming to Auckland. My other confusion with Mangere is how it is pronounced. Man Gary? Man Jerry? Manga Ray? Like the french word Manger? The possibilities were endless but the bus driver merely nodded and took our money for a ticket, he didn't give us any indication of how it was to be pronounced.

The view across Mangere Lagoon

We only had two short days in Auckland and so decided that to make the most of it we would spend the first day in Central Auckland where we would explore the town centre, or go to find a vineyard for wine tasting, and then climb up Mount Eden to see stunning views of the city and the sunset. We were then going to spend our second day closer to the airport and explore some of the volcanoes, bays and hills near to our accommodation. 

So the morning came that we were to get up and head off, and we did not wake up early and generally did not do much until about three in the afternoon when we finally decided to leave the house. I would like to now tell you that we went on an amazing adventure. We did, we went to the chippy near to our house (we were in a good place to get to the airport, but to be honest nothing else was near to our house apart from a small corner shop and a chippy). We then ate some chips and walked around Mangere Lagoon before climbing up Mt Mangere where we watched some of the sunset. We were also surprised to find a woman who runs up the steep slope of Mt Mangere every day, not once but five times.

Mt Mangere

The next day we just hung out at the accommodation, there wasn't really too much time to go into Auckland and there didn't really seem a wealth of things to do from our online searches. 

Sky City view in Auckland

But alas, other things were in motion. Upon doing the final checks of our flight time we realised that despite the long flight we didn't actually leave until the twelth. We are crossing the date line, so in effect we get two August 12ths. We unfortunately couldn't book our accomodation for the night so we embarked into Auckland proper and stayed a night in a hostel there. The next morning we explored Auckland proper by wandering around some of it's streets before looking at the Botanical gardens. Our online searches were proved correct, there isn't really much to do in Auckland apart from fly out.

Olivia having a beard off with a Dwarf at the Airport

Final Thoughts

I was really worried that we'd find New Zealand dissapointing (particularly after the Fiji incident). I did a project on New Zealand when I was in year five and had dreamed of going there ever since. Now not everything is as I expected it to be and there were some things that just didn't work out, (we didn't get to try any traditional maori food as the restaurant was closed for winter, the weather was cold and we didn't see any Kiwi birds). But none of these caused any major disappointments. I think it's fair to say that for both of us New Zealand was really good (Olivia would have prefered more insulated houses, a hot tub and some more sunshine, but other than that all was good).

There are however a few things that I think we would change if we were to come back, they are highlighted below:

The Botanical Gardens

A car

New Zealand's bus service was really good, we traveled everywhere on Intercity busses which are the Kiwi equivalent to the Megabus. Although they were fantastic at getting us around, I think for greater flexibility we really feel renting a car or camper van would be a good option. New Zealand is such a fantastic country with amazing scenery which seemed best explored via the use of a car. Rentals are apparently very cheap and some companies offer you a free ferry crossing and three days car hire if you go from Christchurch towards Auckland, as most people do the opposite. 

More time

As highlighted above there is so much to do, we've visited some amazing places but with more time and different seasons I am sure that we could fill at least another few months with things to see and do. Many people have come here for more than the two weeks we have done, some have even done a whole six months here. But as we highlighted in our South Island post, we only had limited time here because we wanted to see the world, and in order to do that other things had to be sacrificed. 

More money

New Zealand is not really an expensive place at all, the budget is very friendly for those on a small amount of money. The prices seemed a lot on the first day we were here, but that's because one NZD is roughly 50p so everything seemed double the UK, but that said most things are all very reasonable and in many ways cheaper than the UK. But the thing that really would suck our trips budget dry would be all the fantastic things that you can do. I very much felt that we did our trip to New Zealand justice, we did all the things that we wanted to do in the places we went. But equally if we were to come back I think it would be very easy to spend so much more time seeing and doing all that New Zealand has to offer.

Mt Mangere

I hope the above doesn't come across in a way that we were disappointed with New Zealand because that is so not true. We accomplished and saw all the things we wanted to, but we also became aware that New Zealand has so much more to offer. We will be sad to say goodbye to it, but we are also very excited in moving on to South America. 

By the way if you do get a chance to visit New Zealand and want some people to help show you around, forget the tour agencies, we'll come and do it for you! (as long as we make a stop to eat burgers at Flat Hills)

The view across Mangere Lagoon from Mt Mangere

What next?

• We are going to be landing in Buenos Aires tomorrow, you can see what we get up to here.
• Feeling inspired to travel? Have a look at our previous places (Europe) (Asia) (The Pacific)
• Or you can drop us a comment below or send us a message and we'd be happy to help out.
• See where we're going in the future here (for the whole trip).