We arrived in Auckland on September 30 at around 5am...hung out in the airport for a couple hours until the buses started running at 7am so we could get into the city. After catching a bus into the city, we lugged our huge travel packs along with our smaller day backpacks around trying to find a cafe with wifi. Long story short, between the jet lag, a pretty awful nights sleep on the airplane, and the giant bags we were carrying, we tired pretty quickly and ended up jumping between cafes and parks to just hang out. Also, found out that I could put an New Zealand Spark SIM card into my iPhone : success!
Later in the afternoon I left Don to sit and relax for a bit with all our luggage while I tramped over to the grocery store to have my first New Zealand grocery store experience. Don looked a bit homeless, I might add, with about four large bags with majority of our possessions surrounding him. But at that point, we were a bit homeless. More on that later.
Back to groceries...I found a Countdown, which is one of the few large grocery store chains in the country. I think you can tell a lot about a country through their food, one of the reasons that food and cooking intrigue me so much. From a few minutes in the store, it was pretty clear that New Zealand LOVES it's meat. Which frustrated me at first, only because I tend towards vegetarian but I also eat fish and poultry. I quickly decided that I needed to readjust. Grabbed the essentials for the next few days and headed back to my sleepy boyfriend. At this point, we looked even more homeless, with all of the food things we owned in plastic bags around us. Oh well.
We had made prior arrangements with some friends of Don's Aunt Sheryl, Rich and Lindy Davis, to stay with them for a few days upon first arriving so we could readjust our internal clocks and make some more plans for traveling. We took a bus to their house in the late afternoon and realized that our first experience in New Zealand would be one of luxury. Their home was literally steps from the beach and their front gate opened onto a seawall sidewalk type thing. From anywhere in their home, the waves could be heard. I was in heaven. If you know me, you know that I am home anytime I am by the ocean or really any kind of water that is moving :) The next pictures shows the view from their front gate and along the seawall.
Our time at Rich and Lindy's was wonderful. We stayed warm, well fed, and well hydrated. They were very gracious hosts and our time with them was a great way to start a journey.
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