14th May.

It's time to say good-bye to Wellington and head north again . We caught a bus from downtown to the airport which only took 30 minutes. Check in took exactly 5 minutes. We have been very impressed with the ease of checking in on Air New Zealand. You turn up at the airport, enter your details into a machine, out comes the luggage label and the boarding pass, you put your case on the conveyor belt and hey presto! You have checked in. Once again the weather had been kind to us and I (Alan) was able to take some great shots of Wellington from the air.

Auckland was an hour’s flying away. Picked up a new hire car at the airport. We opted for an upgrade to a larger car and we got a top of the range Holden, equivalent to a large Vauxhall/Opel. The dashboard resembled a cockpit with lots of dials and gauges. I got the hang of the basics and off we went.

Instead of going straight to the city centre, we decided to go over the Auckland Harbour Bridge and visit an old suburb of Auckland – Devonport . A friend of ours came from there, so it was only right that we went and took a look. Devonport is also a 10-minute ferry ride from Auckland centre. The service is frequent and quick – a bit like the Star Ferry in HK. It’s a prosperous suburb with lots of small independent shops. There did seem to be a lot of second-hand book shops there. It was very pleasant walking along King Edward Parade and up Victoria Street. Looking at the substantial Victorian villas, one could surmise that this was, and is, a prosperous part of Auckland.

We have now experienced rush hour traffic at Auckland. Nothing too bad so far but a chap we were talking to on the plane, who lives in a suburb north of the city, said that, in order to get to Auckland by car for a 9 o’clock meeting, he had to get up at around 5 to beat the traffic. Perhaps things are just as bad as London, afterall.

15th May Waitakere Ranges

The weather forecast was none too inspiring so we decided to make most of the morning sunshine with a drive out to the Waitakere Ranges, an area of hills and forests to the southwest of Auckland . All went well as far as the rather suggestively named town of Titirangi. From there we set off on the Scenic Drive and half an hour later...found ourselves back in Titirangi ! Bit of a cock-up on the map- reading front by HT. Had a calming cup of coffee, set off again and this time all was well. The whole Waitakere area was once covered with forests of huge kauri trees but loggers cleared virtually everything during the century from 1840-1942. Since then a lot has been restored and in another 4 or 5 centuries it should look just the way it was ! From a vantage point at the Arataki Visitor Centre we had some marvellous views out across the forest with its huge variety of trees and tree ferns to the Manukau Harbour beyond. Then, just to remind us that this was a rain forest, the heavens opened and by the time we were heading back to Auckland we were in a tremendous thunderstorm. But that’s why NZ is so green, just like home.

Today’s interesting fact, especially for the BL Marmite Fan Club. When a New Zealander invented a vegetarian alternative to marmite he wanted to market it as "Pawill" – “Ma Might” “Pa Will”. No, well no one really got the joke then either so he called it Vegemite instead.