Hav­ing ves­ted ourselves of the plane to New Zea­l­and from Sydney, and hav­ing made it through the some­what mer­cur­ial Aus­tralian secur­ity check points with its “explos­ive smelling device”, we came to Auck­land in the grip of a rain storm.  Fat welts of rain pum­melled the pave­ments out­side the air­port doors throw­ing up a fine mist and risk­ing loc­al­ised flood­ing.  Well, this is New Zea­l­and in winter!  As (Father-In-Law) Nick put it,

“If you can hack NZ in Winter then you’ll love it in summer!”

Not sur­pris­ingly we skipped the bus – a run through the deluge to the stop and a soggy bus ride was not appeal­ing – and hailed a trans­fer from the air­port.  This all seemed very civ­il­ised until the second hour of the thirty minute jour­ney.  It seemed that the driver (a loose defin­i­tion here based solely on his pos­i­tion in the car being behind the wheel) did not know his way around Auck­land, which is always a good start for a trans­fer.  He also couldn’t find our hostel and even­tu­ally announced that it didn’t exist. 

“You have old copy, not up to date,” he pro­claimed when Cesca showed him our Lonely Planet entry for our hostel.  That was his defen­ded pos­i­tion until, eagle eyed to tech­no­logy, I spot­ted the hostel’s loc­a­tion saved as a favour­ite on his GPS! 

After that he attemp­ted to charge us double. 

A shock­ingly short jour­ney to the later we arrived at Lantana Lodge and were dumped unce­re­mo­ni­ously on the pave­ment out­side.  Our “driver” raced off into the rain and he is pos­sibly still circ­ling Auck­land try­ing to find the motor­way interchange.

As we con­sidered our fate the rain stopped and so we trudged up to the hostel.  Lantana Lodge was ini­tially selec­ted for its free WIFI, but I was most impressed by the entire exper­i­ence as its host was a very nice guy and the hostel had a good homely feel.  Such things are import­ant after the cramp, ever buzz­ing, “cattle class” bowels of mod­ern air­line travel. 

We imme­di­ately went out look­ing for “real NZ food”.  When we found it (soggy chips and meat pie float­ers) we quickly decided to for­get local fare and have a curry. Over the meal we made ourselves a sol­emn promise,

“I prom­ise to see New Zea­l­and, to meet its people, drink its wine and spy its creatures.  I prom­ise to enjoy this oppor­tun­ity to the fullest!”

The next day I awoke eager to get out into the wilds and exper­i­ence the coun­tryside, but first came the now oblig­at­ory city visit.  I don’t quite need drag­ging around a city but, since I come from one of the top cit­ies in the world, it takes a lot to impress me. 

Auck­land has the bustle of a real city and the sky­line to sug­gest money but it seemed at first to lack some of the soul. It would not actu­ally be until I vis­ited Wellington’s Tae Papa museum that I would get to see Auckland’s soul prop­erly and its very strong com­munity spirit.

We swung around the centre and enjoyed a fant­astic café and a good book­shop then we headed into the shop­ping dis­trict and pur­chased me a new pair of sun glasses (“sun­nies” as they are known here).  So far so nor­mal.  I was just fin­ish­ing this blog post off in my head when Cesca sug­ges­ted a trip form the bay.  We boarded the ferry from the south har­bour and departed.

Then Auck­land got me and I got it. 

The trip we took across the bay to the Devon­port town­ship on the far side of an extinct vol­cano was an eye opener and no mis­take.  The Auck­land sky­line that had been so unin­spir­ing when I was in amongst it sud­denly looked majestic and mod­ern from the water.  The bridge, which is a shadow of Sydney’s, sud­denly looked like an eleg­ant brace­let span­ning the arms of the bay.  Not vul­gar but under­stated: the jew­ellery of a lady not the chunky penis exten­sion of The Goldern Gate.  My memor­ies of the city now all hark back to that jour­ney.  Once arrived at Devon­port the entire feel changes.  This is much more of a wide and gen­tile sub­urb, seem­ingly a world away from the city, as the car access was miles around.  It sits invit­ingly across the bay tempt­ing you to com­mute such a dis­tance.  I bet Cesca that the house prices were astro­nom­ical and they were.  Such water front love­li­ness costs the earth. 

Up the dead-volcano we walked or more accur­ately climbed.  From the top the sheer size of a fully fledged New Zea­l­and city (and there is only really three like this) came to view.  Nature is just big­ger over here.

But I was not sated by only this view.  After an after­noon of relax­ing in Devon­port we headed back and went up to the SkyCity’s highest view­ing plat­form.  This was a great exper­i­ence at the sun­down and I loved watch­ing the cars race back along the roads far below our feet. 

So, again, we are in a city and again I cant wait to leave for the moun­tains.   But as before I find that Auck­land con­tains some ser­i­ous aes­thetic beauty and for that I enjoyed it.  Even a human city as big as this can­not swal­low of majesty of the New Zealand’s coun­tryside upon which it lays and that is its saviour and bless­ing over lesser cities.

Regards,

Basho

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