At last I feel like I'm on holiday! All my life people reckoned I would love NZ - and it has taken me a long time to get here, but I have to say... GUYS, YOU WERE RIGHT! I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS PLACE. And so far I've hardly seen anything of it. Auckland is an amazingly friendly city and, after two weeks of frantic packing up of houses and two further weeks of saying farewell to friends and family from Hobart to Bundaberg, it was so good to have a day without any agendas and plans.
Penny and I spent the morning exploring a very quiet (Sunday) Auckland city, then caught a ferry to Waiheke Island. Auckland has the most beautiful harbour I've ever seen and the volcanic islands are fantastic and all very different from each-other. We hired bicycles on Waiheke Is. and went swimming on a beautiful beach. Unfortunately I haven't got any photos of the harbour or the island - but the camera will be back on-line tomorrow (at last... battery problems) and so hopefully I can post some photos of NZ soon.
Auckland doesn't seem to be in the grip of a 'building frenzy' like most of Australia - the houses in the areas we have seen are mostly older. Also, Kiwis don't seem to have fallen prey to infestations of heat-pumps and satellite dishes. The national identity appears to be stronger than Australia - but it doesn't seem to have the nasty edge of 'nationalism' - more like 'we're all in it together'. There is a 'Buy NZ' campaign on tele to encourage local job-creation. It's a bit like Australia was before our economy somehow got taken-over by the USA. The Kiwis seem to like wearing T-shirts and jewellery with NZ designs as much as the tourists and many of the the Maoris are stunningly beautiful looking people. The local beer is great (but expensive)and there are still quite a few brews to explore over the next three days!
