Journals #24 and #25
3/26/16
Cover Photo: “Don’t Believe Me, Just Watch”
Sheep Spotted: 20

The New Zealand trip has officially gone full circle! I first came to Auckland back on March 1st, and here I am again 25 days later.

What’s most striking about Auckland is just how different it is from every other city I’ve been to in New Zealand (especially Wellington). Not only is it New Zealand’s largest city by population (1.45 million- which is roughly a third of NZ’s entire population), it is also far and way the most commercial city in New Zealand.

Nearly every restaurant and shop is a chain here: lining every street are traditional American staples like Starbucks, McDonalds, Burger King, and Dunkin’ Donuts.

To put this in perspective, I had seen maybe 1 total of the above 4 chains in any of the other cities I visited (yet here they are literally on every street corner- in fact there’s one area downtown where a McDonalds directly faces another McDonalds).

Nestled between multiple Volcanoes and two different “coasts” (Waitemata and Manukau), Auckland is also the economic capital of New Zealand (meaning- if you’re a Western company expanding to NZ, this is where you put your offices). That combined with a huge uptick in tourism and the largest Maori population in NZ, means that Auckland is and feels packed.

While most areas of New Zealand do basically live up the tourist stereotype of New Zealand being a “quaint island country with breathtaking landscapes,” Auckland is probably closer to New York City than that description.

That said- the bays and the Volcanoes make Auckland an awesome place to visit. After busing in from Rotorua (very easy- 3.5 hours tops), I went up to the top of the Auckland Sky tower-which at $28 NZD/person is a bit expensive, but has awesome 360 views of the entire city (see today’s photo).

Then today I decided to kick it up a notch and do the famous “Coast to Coast” hike in Auckland, which is a 16km hike that covers nearly every landmark in the city from one end to the other (such named because you start at the Waitemata Coast and finish at the Manukau coast). It is a very cool hike that covers a wide variety of landscape: Mountains, Hills, Parks, City Streets, and Oceans.

It takes about 4 hours to complete (One-way- I Ubered back for 20 NZD) and if you have the stamina- definitely do it. The only warning I would give is to definitely make a copy of the map- in theory, there are signs pointing you in the right direction, but in my experience the signs tended to be far apart and unspecific (i.e. a straight arrow when there was no straight path).

On a related note- don’t use Taxis here. Unless you’ve scheduled one ahead of time with the Cab Company and negotiated the rate, fully expect to be paying sums of $40+ for short trips. I would highly recommend using Uber- Wifi is abundant in New Zealand (basically every bar, restaurant, and coffee shop offers it for free and Auckland even has a free city one that covers the entire harbor) and most international data plans are easy to use here- so USE UBER.

Anyways I’m here for 5 more days before going to Australia so I will have plenty more to report in the following days. That’s all for now-

Cheers,

Morgan