Our round the world trip started on the 17th of January, 2009. After a few teary goodbyes (mostly bec and her mum!) we headed off to Melbourne. We dropped off Simon's car at his sister's house, had a few more tears (this time Simon's mum!) and headed off to the airport to begin our adventure - first stop Auckland, New Zealand.
We spent our first day in Auckland wandering around the city, exploring. It is a pretty cool city. Auckland sits on a big harbour and looks out onto several small islands that surround it. The city itself is very hilly, with lots of trees and nice parks. On our second day there we caught the ferry out to one of the islands, Rangitoto island. The entire island is an old volcano and is basically uninhabited. We spent the entire day there walking. We walked about 20 - 25 kms during the day, and both had pretty sore butts by the end of it. By far, the best part was the summit walk, which was a pretty decent climb to get to the top. At the summit, we had 360 degree views of Auckland and all the surrounding islands, it was pretty freaking amazing! Can't say we've done too much else with the rest of our time in Auckland. We've spent the rest of our days walking around the city, checking out the Viaduct Harbour. If we'd had more time we would have loved to get out of the city and see some more of the countryside. Auckland is a pretty easy place to spent a few days. It has a very 'Sydney' feel about it though, and Simon and I both don't really feel like we've left home yet. Aside from the Kiwi accents and the different currency (the coins have been pretty confusing - fifty cents look like our ten cents, and two dollars look like our one dollars), Auckland could be any big Australian city. We are flying out today to our next destination, Santiago in Chile. We're both pretty excited about getting there and 'starting' our trip!
