Auckland, New Zealand

Landed in Auckland in the afternoon after a very bumpy ride from Melbourne. It was cloudy and felt just like the moment before it starts to rain for a very long time. But rain is what makes New Zealand green they say, so hooray for that I guess. Jumped on a shuttle bus to the city, just to find out that the ride was $33, and I had a rental car two days later for $29 a day, not much of a saving waiting to pick up the rental car, haha
New Zealand is not huge, it is a little smaller than Italy and located quite remotely in the Pacific Ocean, so that the Northern part of of NZ almost starts where the most Southern part of Australia main land ends, almost, but then 2500 km to the East of Australia. It consists primarily of to big islands, and they sure spent a lot of time coming up with good names for the islands, the North and South Island is what they came up with. Easy.
They call themselves Kiwis, the national bird is a kiwi, and it is believed that it was the New Zealand Royal Airforce who first were referred to as Kiwis as they wore a military roundel picturing a kiwi, the bird!
With only 4.5 million Kiwi's on New Zealand, there is plenty of room for sheep and cattle to roam around the unspoiled nature.
Auckland, the capital, is located on the Northern part of the North Island, has more yachts per person living in the city, than any other city in the world. I went to the harbor to look, but only found a few super sized boats, which I doubt belong to the average Kiwi. I later found that there are average man's marinas everywhere and there are more boats than I could count!
The city center is dominated by not too many skyscrapers, in fact it is a quite flat city. The attitude in the city seems to be much more relaxed than Melbourne, taxi's don't have grill behind the taxi driver to keep him safe for example like it was the case in Melbourne.
They do have one building though, the SkyCity building which rises far above any other building in Auckland. If you have a building that is tall, of course someone has to jump from it, right? That people ca do every day and at first I thought it was bungy jumping that they were doing in the hard wind, that would be a little dangerous afterall? But they had two wires going up that were tight, with a wire between that could move up and down. The person would then be hooked up the the cross wire and pushed out from the top floor. A brake on one side of the cross wire would slow the "free fall" to some fast elevator speed. It actually looked a little lame, sorry to say so, but teenagers were standing in line to get the thrill of their lives.
On the harbor there was a lot of action going on, a couple of fishing boats were getting ready for tonight's or tomorrows early fishing, where as others were just hanging out on their nice boats in the harbor.
There were some huge sailing boats, which for sure must be meant for competition, they could probably have a crew of 40-50 people to counter balance the boat when getting some good wind in the sails.
Got some shots of the city from the harbor, but none of them were really good because of the light, the sun was setting in not too long. There was a front of clouds coming in low, so when the sun set, we couldn't see it, but moments later the entire sky turned orange/red, really good color. The sun was lighting up the cloud cover high above the low cloud cover.
I didn't plan on spending very much time in Auckland, just prepare for my trip around New Zealand as much as I could, without freezing any plan except a known end date. I didn't bring my superb wind/rain-jacket, because I thought I could by a cheap one for New Zealand. On the other hand, this is a place where the superb jacket is really needed and I am probably going to be using it more here than anywhere else, ever. But prices here are pretty high, especially on imported stuff from the US, which was not very appealing.
I had a dive trip planned a few days later and realized that I needed to buy an external flash for the underwater camera to make the pictures look more colorful. I tracked down several dive shops and eventually found one that had some entry model flash light, just my price range. No matter what I would buy as the first camera/flash, in the long run, it is not going to be good enough and an upgrade is around the corner, just a matter of time. Got what needed, almost, still missing a fiber optical cable, used to tell the flash when to fire.
The hostel was quite nice, except that it was located on the highest hill in the city, and the last few streets was a real climb. The room was small, only 4 people and I finally seem to have met some real backpackers, with hiking shoes and plans to go around to see things, different from Australia for sure, in a good way!
One guy came home at night pretty drunk, I would say around 2am or 3am. He was snoring like crazy and the guy in the bunk bed below him kept kicking his bed to get him to stop. At some point he stopped, and we could finally sleep. In the morning at 5.30 or so, there is a loud bang, and we all wake up. The drunk guy had fallen from the top bunk bed to the floor, and limped out of the room. We couldn't stop laughing

If I had been a little earlier and with a little more time on my hands, it would probably have been a better idea to buy a car and resell it. But I wouldn't know how fast someone would buy it and maybe end up loosing money on that deal. At least there were plenty of cars available on a board at the hostel, anywhere from super cheap to decent cars for a decent price. But I was going to rent, easier to get rid of.
Also saw another ad, "If you are British, you can earn a lot of money, easily. People are dying to learn the real British accent and will pay good money for it". The British I have heard from the young people is horrible and really gives me goosebumps to think if this was to become a world language... haha
Auckland seem to have a lot of Asian people too, but this time the restaurants were run by real authentic people. Had some very food sushi with a big raw scampi, it was not my favorite last time and still isn't, haha. He must have been alive a few minutes earlier because he had this sad look in his eyes. Something I have to learn to eat I think. The rest was super though. Another night I had Korean BBQ buffet, probably ate for an entire week, never meat again, never!!!