Auckland Day 144 9/02/2015

We got up early for our 7.15am flight to Auckland. The flight is part of our round the world ticket with One World, so we were able to use the lounge and fill ourselves up with the free breakfast. The flight was uneventful and arrived in Auckland on schedule. The landing revealed the island nature of Auckland and we were surprised to see how arid the landscape looked in places. After getting some money we caught the airport shuttle in to the centre of the city where we had arranged to meet Lesley. We first met Lesley nearly 2 years ago in Peru. She's lived here now for nearly 20 years and it's not hard to see why. We got the ferry over to the north shore and then it was a short drive to her lovely house in Bayswater. After catching up over a cup of tea we headed out for a short walk to Narrow Neck Beach. Back at Lesley's we met her partner Richard and all set off on a short drive to North Head in Devonport, a grassy hilltop with fantastic views of the city and out to the islands, where we enjoyed a lovely picnic taking in the scenery. Auckland is a sprawling city although the central downtown area, which houses the majority of high-rise buildings, is very small. Whilst not the capital it is the largest city; Richard told us that 40% of Kiwi's live in Auckland, an additional 40% live on the North Island with 20% on the South. However with a population of only 5.5m people on a landmass the size of the UK, that isn't very crowded. Later in the evening we got the NZ map out and they gave us some recommendations of where would be good to go, especially places meeting our category of beautiful places but not necessarily the most busy, "honeypot" ones.

Enjoying a paddle in the sea

Narrow Neck Beach

Setting out the picnic on North Head 

The city skyline with Devonport in the foreground