My plane touched down at about 5:30am on Friday the 4th in Auckland. It had been a long and tiring journey. 24hrs ago I had boarded a plane and I had barely slept since. Now I had to stay awake for another day in order to try and tackle jet lag.
The first day I went for a walk around the local area, an attempt to try and not fall asleep. One of my first impressions was that the pavement seemed to have a familiar decay to it, this was a welcome sight that reminded me of home. What wasn’t so familiar though was the jungle that seemed to line the roads. On the walk down to Titirangi beach reserve it felt like I was miles away from civilization, not less than a mile. At the beach I tried out the public toilets, I was pleasantly surprised with how well maintained they were, In a different ballpark to the British ones. This was a good sign as I will be using them a fair amount while traveling in the van.
On the way back I stopped in on a café to grab a little lunch. I noticed they were selling pies. Being a pie lover, and hearing that the Kiwis are proud of their pies I thought I better try one. I settled on the cheese and mince. It was served with some ketchup and salad. While eating it I watched a young couple on the other side of the road. They were attempting to fill their van up with fuel at a pay at pump fuel station. By the look of the gentlemen’s football shirt they looked English. A good 10 minutes went by as they tried to get their heads around how the system worked, even a locals assistance didn’t seem to help very much. It must be quite the puzzle, I am wondering how I will fair. By the time they eventually cracked the enigma I had finished my pie. It was an decent pie but I couldn’t quite work out where the cheese was.
The next day I went to Piha with the family I am staying with. It is a spectacular beach to the west of Auckland and it has free parking (I’m a big fan of free parking). The sands are black and seem to sparkle like a nights sky when water washes over them and the waves are monstrous and look like they have a lot of power behind them. It’s a great surfing beach but not somewhere you’d want to go if you weren’t experienced. You know it’s a dangerous beach when there is a TV show that follows the lifeguards there.
Up to this point I hadn’t been feeling great but just put it down to the jet lag. Waking up on Sunday I realised that I had a cold. The reason that I didn’t post an update on the blog earlier was because I just didn’t really have the energy. It’s now Thursday when I am writing this and I am finally feeling much better.
On Monday I viewed a van to buy, a key part to my plans to travel out here. It turned out that the van was solid and everything I was after so I agreed to buy it and put down a deposit. I will hopefully be picking the van up on Monday, I’m pretty stoked! Yesterday I managed to tick off the most important item on my to do list, buy a surfboard. I got a train to downtown Auckland then a bus north to a surf shop I had heard good things about. The guy working there called Nick was a top bloke. He was super helpful and we managed to sort the right board out, a PU 6’8 thruster. I’m frothing to get into the water however the swell isn’t ideal right now (too big for me, double overhead+) so I’m just going to have to wait. So far I am enjoying New Zealand. There are a lot of similarities but it is the small differences that I am noticing.
Hi Jack
So glad you’re getting over your cold. Journey sounded grim. Love your blogs. So well written
and so interesting. Keep them coming!!! Grandma
Hi Jack, enjoyed the the touchdown in NZ entry. Loved the pie bit, Barnaby appreciates a good pie too but has never tried a mince and cheese one. Hope the van is working and the board is good.
Lovin this stuff Jack. What a dream!