On Sunday February 1, I left Taupo on a Newman bus bound for Auckland. Newman is the name of one of the bus companies which I had expected to be the most luxurious of the bus lines because their coaches are all listed as being five star. However, I actually like the other busses I had taken better. There were of course long breaks during the trip to allow the passengers to buy refreshments at cafes and there was driver commentary along the way to explain what it was we were seeing out the windows. The bus also had seatbelts and children under the age of twelve were required to buckle up.
I had checked out of the campground in the morning and had brought my backpack to the bus terminal where they had stored it until my bus departed at 14:00. The bus ride would get me into Auckland around 20:00. It unfortunately was a bit of a waste of a day since I could not have time to do anything adventurous in Taupo and I would be arriving so late in Auckland. However, it was the only way that I could get from Taupo to Auckland from where my flight would depart the next day.
The ride was uneventful and not nearly as spectacular as the bus ride from Greymouth to Nelson had been. The bus ride that day had been full of site seeing. The bus to Auckland was more along the lines of just being transportation. One reason was that we were stopping in urban areas such as Hamilton rather than going through forests or along rivers.
We arrived in Auckland and after getting my bearings and looking up information on the airport shuttle for the next day, I checked my map and started out for my hostel. I had chosen this hostel because it was located right downtown which would allow me quick access to the sites without having to take busses from the suburbs and the hostels there. If I were to stay longer in Auckland, I would have chosen a hostel in the Ponsonby area which had been reported by the guidebook and friends as being a thriving area populated by cafes and restaurants. The hostel I chose called the Queenstreet Backpackers was not particularly nice as it catered to buses of teenagers and had a cleaning crew that was not very particular, but the staff was friendly and it worked out well for what I wanted. So, once I had set down my bags, I headed out to the city to explore.
I believe that after having spent so many days in Christchurch both exploring and talking with people, that I was predisposed to dislike Auckland. As I mentioned before, the people in Christchurch spoke of people from Auckland as being cosmopolitan snobs and snubbed the city much in the same way that people in Jutland, Denmark snub Copenhagen. However, Auckland is a nice city and I am not really in a position to judge it since I only spent one rainy day there and predominantly within a several square kilometer area around Queen Street which is the main street. Plus I had come to New Zealand to see the spectacular countryside and after coming from Taupo, it was a bit disheartening to be in an urban setting.
Approximately one quarter of the population of New Zealand lives in the city of Auckland, making it the largest city in the country. Geographically, the sprawl of the city straddles a thin strip of land between the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea and it is only a few kilometer walk to get from the harbor on one side to the harbor on the other. To the east lies the Haitemeta Harbor which is the city’s deep harbor port which fills with sailboats during the summer, earning the city the name “City of Sails”. Auckland was host to the Americas Cup over the summers of 1999-2000 and 2002-2003. Looking out into the harbor, one can see islands and extinct volcanoes rising from the water. The city was built amongst fifty extinct volcanic cones and is dotted with parks and green areas, often around the volcano cones. The landscape makes for a hilly urban setting and so the tourists are always walking up and down hills.
Auckland is the worlds largest Polynesian city with twenty percent of the population either claiming Maori descent or decent from migrants who arrived from the Pacific islands. Yet for such a large population, I did not see a lot of restaurants serving indigenous food, but I was not looking particularly diligently. What one mostly sees are a lot of Asian restaurants (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) and along Queen Street there is a McDonalds, Burger King and Subway on every block. By the civic theater on Queen Street there was a complex that housed not only a Barnes & Noble, but also a Starbucks and a Planet Hollywood. There are big food halls with lots of restaurants inside and the best and most adventurous dining establishments are rumored to be in the inner-city suburbs.
Dominating the skyline of the city center is the concrete Skytower which was built in the 1990’s and is currently New Zealand’s tallest structure at 328 meters in height. There are of course skywalks where one can look out through the windows to get great views of the surrounding city. Part of the fun is that sections of the floor in the observation tower are made of glass. Signs assure the visitors that the glass is thick and therefore as strong as concrete, but it truly is a bit nerving to be standing on glass and watching people scurrying about far below you. Since this is New Zealand, the tower of course offers chances for adventure experiences. There is the Skyjump where “daredevils who love life” can pay to jump off of the tower for a mere $195. The jump is a base jump by wire and the speed of the jump is controlled at 75 km per hour. Guide wires prevent the jumper from being blown about the building and the jumper is slowed to a gentle stop to land on a tower at the base of the Skytower. If a jumper runs back up the tower without taking off their jumpsuit, the next jump is only $75. There is also an adventure called Vertigo Climb where people pay $95 to climb up through the narrow spire of the TV tower to reach a small platform that is at 270m. It sounds tame, but the climber must wear helmets, overalls and a body harness and must pass a test in a simulator before being allowed to climb.
Unfortunately, it rained through out the night and it continued to drizzle all throughout the next day. I made some breakfast in the hostel kitchen and then packed up my things for the airplane ride back. The hostel had left luggage where I stowed by backpack and they even sold me a ticket for the airport shuttle. Since I had stayed at a backpacker hostel, I was eligible for the backpacker rate on the shuttle which picked up directly outside of the hostel. It was all extremely convenient.
I had decided that my two main objectives for the day were to get a guided tour of the city’s concert hall and to try to walk the Coast to Coast Walkway which should have taken 4 hours. The walkway is billed as being a great way to take in much of the best that the city has to offer, including harbor views and the summit of some of the volcano cones. I had been assured by a friend from Auckland that climbing the volcano cone was definitely worth the trip.
I walked over to the information office to see if I could get a map of the walk so that I would know where I was going. The woman at the office kind of laughed at my request as it was pouring outside and wished me luck. In hindsight, I would have been better off just sticking around the downtown as the projected time for the walk may have been a bit off, but I did get to see some of the sites. I wandered past the Albert Park overlooking Queen Street, Auckland University and the massive Auckland Domain which is a sprawling park. Unfortunately, the author of the map of the walk was not very concerned with details such as street names. Nor was the walk always marked and so I just kind of wandered about on my own until it was time to head over to the concert hall.
I arrived at the concert hall early out of fear of not being able to get a tour of the hall due to the crowds. Amazingly however, not every tourist in the city had decided to queue up for the tour and the nice woman at the reception desk led me about as soon as I arrived because she did not expect anyone else to come that afternoon. So, I got a personalized tour of the hall and the surrounding facilities. The small, wooden hall is used not only for symphony orchestras, but also rock concerts and other events such as fundraising event where hairstylists had cut hair on the orchestra floor to raise money for charity.
I endeavored to walk to the summit of Mt. Eden but it took much longer than I expected and my route took me through industrial neighborhoods which did not make for a pleasant walk. So, I decided to turn around and spent the rest of the remaining time in the tower and around Queen Street until it was time to return to the hostel to collect my things.
I made a quick change in the hostel’s left luggage room and quickly reorganized by backpacks for the flight. Catching the airport shuttle was painless and within an hour I was at the airport. However, when I boarded the bus, there was a woman having a discussion with the bus driver because she had no idea where to get off of the bus. She was coming from the airport and knew her hotel was in Auckland, but did not know where. The bus driver tried to help her to figure it out but eventually she just got off in the center of the city in hopes that her hotel was close by. I hope she found her hotel.
Once at the airport, I had to pay the $25 airport tax before I was allowed to enter the long halls of tax-free shopping. I wandered past one store and stopped short when I realized the Super Bowl was on the televisions that were for sale. It late Monday afternoon, but it was still Sunday in the US due to the 18 hour time difference. There were four minutes left in the game and soon a big crowd of people were stopped to watch, much to the dismay of the store owner who would not permit the volume of the televisions to be turned on. I wound up standing next to and chatting with an Australian who knew all about the game since sports from the US are broadcast as part of the normal cable package in Australia rather than on cable channels that one must pay for. We made good efforts at guessing the signs that the referees were making to try to make out what was happening. The Australian man had his daughter with him who he kept sending into the store to look for perfume for mom so that she would not be totally bored. The game finished and after farewells, I went through security and walked to my gate.
The flight back was uneventful other than the fact that we were on the Frodo plane and the fact that one of the passengers had gotten off of the plane for some reason. This was not discovered until we were about to take off and so we had to go back to the gate to pick him up and to get more fuel.
We left hours late, but the pilot made up most of the time by the time we arrive at LAX. I had left six hours for my connection and so I had plenty of time to get to the American Airlines gate. The queue for security was unperceivable in length and so I chatted with others in line. It was very odd to be queuing up for a flight which was leaving five hours earlier in the day than my eleven hour long flight from Auckland had left.
So ends the story of my whirlwind trip to New Zealand. The trip was not long enough to really get a taste of what the country had to offer, but it was long enough for me to know that I would like to return to that corner of the world some day.
I had checked out of the campground in the morning and had brought my backpack to the bus terminal where they had stored it until my bus departed at 14:00. The bus ride would get me into Auckland around 20:00. It unfortunately was a bit of a waste of a day since I could not have time to do anything adventurous in Taupo and I would be arriving so late in Auckland. However, it was the only way that I could get from Taupo to Auckland from where my flight would depart the next day.
The ride was uneventful and not nearly as spectacular as the bus ride from Greymouth to Nelson had been. The bus ride that day had been full of site seeing. The bus to Auckland was more along the lines of just being transportation. One reason was that we were stopping in urban areas such as Hamilton rather than going through forests or along rivers.
We arrived in Auckland and after getting my bearings and looking up information on the airport shuttle for the next day, I checked my map and started out for my hostel. I had chosen this hostel because it was located right downtown which would allow me quick access to the sites without having to take busses from the suburbs and the hostels there. If I were to stay longer in Auckland, I would have chosen a hostel in the Ponsonby area which had been reported by the guidebook and friends as being a thriving area populated by cafes and restaurants. The hostel I chose called the Queenstreet Backpackers was not particularly nice as it catered to buses of teenagers and had a cleaning crew that was not very particular, but the staff was friendly and it worked out well for what I wanted. So, once I had set down my bags, I headed out to the city to explore.
I believe that after having spent so many days in Christchurch both exploring and talking with people, that I was predisposed to dislike Auckland. As I mentioned before, the people in Christchurch spoke of people from Auckland as being cosmopolitan snobs and snubbed the city much in the same way that people in Jutland, Denmark snub Copenhagen. However, Auckland is a nice city and I am not really in a position to judge it since I only spent one rainy day there and predominantly within a several square kilometer area around Queen Street which is the main street. Plus I had come to New Zealand to see the spectacular countryside and after coming from Taupo, it was a bit disheartening to be in an urban setting.
Approximately one quarter of the population of New Zealand lives in the city of Auckland, making it the largest city in the country. Geographically, the sprawl of the city straddles a thin strip of land between the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea and it is only a few kilometer walk to get from the harbor on one side to the harbor on the other. To the east lies the Haitemeta Harbor which is the city’s deep harbor port which fills with sailboats during the summer, earning the city the name “City of Sails”. Auckland was host to the Americas Cup over the summers of 1999-2000 and 2002-2003. Looking out into the harbor, one can see islands and extinct volcanoes rising from the water. The city was built amongst fifty extinct volcanic cones and is dotted with parks and green areas, often around the volcano cones. The landscape makes for a hilly urban setting and so the tourists are always walking up and down hills.
Auckland is the worlds largest Polynesian city with twenty percent of the population either claiming Maori descent or decent from migrants who arrived from the Pacific islands. Yet for such a large population, I did not see a lot of restaurants serving indigenous food, but I was not looking particularly diligently. What one mostly sees are a lot of Asian restaurants (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) and along Queen Street there is a McDonalds, Burger King and Subway on every block. By the civic theater on Queen Street there was a complex that housed not only a Barnes & Noble, but also a Starbucks and a Planet Hollywood. There are big food halls with lots of restaurants inside and the best and most adventurous dining establishments are rumored to be in the inner-city suburbs.
Dominating the skyline of the city center is the concrete Skytower which was built in the 1990’s and is currently New Zealand’s tallest structure at 328 meters in height. There are of course skywalks where one can look out through the windows to get great views of the surrounding city. Part of the fun is that sections of the floor in the observation tower are made of glass. Signs assure the visitors that the glass is thick and therefore as strong as concrete, but it truly is a bit nerving to be standing on glass and watching people scurrying about far below you. Since this is New Zealand, the tower of course offers chances for adventure experiences. There is the Skyjump where “daredevils who love life” can pay to jump off of the tower for a mere $195. The jump is a base jump by wire and the speed of the jump is controlled at 75 km per hour. Guide wires prevent the jumper from being blown about the building and the jumper is slowed to a gentle stop to land on a tower at the base of the Skytower. If a jumper runs back up the tower without taking off their jumpsuit, the next jump is only $75. There is also an adventure called Vertigo Climb where people pay $95 to climb up through the narrow spire of the TV tower to reach a small platform that is at 270m. It sounds tame, but the climber must wear helmets, overalls and a body harness and must pass a test in a simulator before being allowed to climb.
Unfortunately, it rained through out the night and it continued to drizzle all throughout the next day. I made some breakfast in the hostel kitchen and then packed up my things for the airplane ride back. The hostel had left luggage where I stowed by backpack and they even sold me a ticket for the airport shuttle. Since I had stayed at a backpacker hostel, I was eligible for the backpacker rate on the shuttle which picked up directly outside of the hostel. It was all extremely convenient.
I had decided that my two main objectives for the day were to get a guided tour of the city’s concert hall and to try to walk the Coast to Coast Walkway which should have taken 4 hours. The walkway is billed as being a great way to take in much of the best that the city has to offer, including harbor views and the summit of some of the volcano cones. I had been assured by a friend from Auckland that climbing the volcano cone was definitely worth the trip.
I walked over to the information office to see if I could get a map of the walk so that I would know where I was going. The woman at the office kind of laughed at my request as it was pouring outside and wished me luck. In hindsight, I would have been better off just sticking around the downtown as the projected time for the walk may have been a bit off, but I did get to see some of the sites. I wandered past the Albert Park overlooking Queen Street, Auckland University and the massive Auckland Domain which is a sprawling park. Unfortunately, the author of the map of the walk was not very concerned with details such as street names. Nor was the walk always marked and so I just kind of wandered about on my own until it was time to head over to the concert hall.
I arrived at the concert hall early out of fear of not being able to get a tour of the hall due to the crowds. Amazingly however, not every tourist in the city had decided to queue up for the tour and the nice woman at the reception desk led me about as soon as I arrived because she did not expect anyone else to come that afternoon. So, I got a personalized tour of the hall and the surrounding facilities. The small, wooden hall is used not only for symphony orchestras, but also rock concerts and other events such as fundraising event where hairstylists had cut hair on the orchestra floor to raise money for charity.
I endeavored to walk to the summit of Mt. Eden but it took much longer than I expected and my route took me through industrial neighborhoods which did not make for a pleasant walk. So, I decided to turn around and spent the rest of the remaining time in the tower and around Queen Street until it was time to return to the hostel to collect my things.
I made a quick change in the hostel’s left luggage room and quickly reorganized by backpacks for the flight. Catching the airport shuttle was painless and within an hour I was at the airport. However, when I boarded the bus, there was a woman having a discussion with the bus driver because she had no idea where to get off of the bus. She was coming from the airport and knew her hotel was in Auckland, but did not know where. The bus driver tried to help her to figure it out but eventually she just got off in the center of the city in hopes that her hotel was close by. I hope she found her hotel.
Once at the airport, I had to pay the $25 airport tax before I was allowed to enter the long halls of tax-free shopping. I wandered past one store and stopped short when I realized the Super Bowl was on the televisions that were for sale. It late Monday afternoon, but it was still Sunday in the US due to the 18 hour time difference. There were four minutes left in the game and soon a big crowd of people were stopped to watch, much to the dismay of the store owner who would not permit the volume of the televisions to be turned on. I wound up standing next to and chatting with an Australian who knew all about the game since sports from the US are broadcast as part of the normal cable package in Australia rather than on cable channels that one must pay for. We made good efforts at guessing the signs that the referees were making to try to make out what was happening. The Australian man had his daughter with him who he kept sending into the store to look for perfume for mom so that she would not be totally bored. The game finished and after farewells, I went through security and walked to my gate.
The flight back was uneventful other than the fact that we were on the Frodo plane and the fact that one of the passengers had gotten off of the plane for some reason. This was not discovered until we were about to take off and so we had to go back to the gate to pick him up and to get more fuel.
We left hours late, but the pilot made up most of the time by the time we arrive at LAX. I had left six hours for my connection and so I had plenty of time to get to the American Airlines gate. The queue for security was unperceivable in length and so I chatted with others in line. It was very odd to be queuing up for a flight which was leaving five hours earlier in the day than my eleven hour long flight from Auckland had left.
So ends the story of my whirlwind trip to New Zealand. The trip was not long enough to really get a taste of what the country had to offer, but it was long enough for me to know that I would like to return to that corner of the world some day.
No comments:
Post a Comment