Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Auckland Part 2

On Tuesday, we woke up early and left our very last campsite. The rental company were expecting their Spaceship van back later that day so we sped south, arriving our hostel, The Oaklands Lodge in the Mount Eden district of Auckland, arriving just after 2pm. The reception turned out to be closed so we were unable to check in. Reluctantly, we left the non-valuable parts of our luggage in the hallway and made our last journey in our Spaceship, handing it back in plenty of time and returning to the hostel to check in.



We returned to the hostel and immediately discovered that Hannah's phone had gone missing. A quick call to the phone revealed that it had just been found under the driver's seat in our van, necessitating a trip back to the depot the next day. We combined this with a spot of sightseeing. Auckland is a nice city and, despite being much smaller (and having much worse public transport) than the likes of Sydney and Melbourne, is rather large compared to anywhere else in New Zealand.

While exploring the city, we were rather pleasantly surprised to find the presumed inspiration for New Zealand's most successful soap opera:



One of the main attractions in Auckland is the Sky Tower, the southern hemisphere's tallest building. We considered paying a fortune to go up to the top but decided against it because we were staying right next to Mount Eden, a volcanic cone of similar height from which views of the city can be seen. On Wednesday evening, I left Hannah in the hostel and climbed to the top. It quickly became apparent that this is indeed a volcanic cone, as I found the crater:



I would have loved to have explored the crater but the sign persuaded me not to:



From the top, there were views of the other volcanic domes that are scattered around the city:





The harbour bridge could be seen in the distance:



...as could the tall buildings of the CBD:



Our time in Auckland came to an end rather too quickly. We donated what was left of our food to the free food shelf in the hostel and headed to the airport to catch a plane to Melbourne, the first leg of our journey to Singapore and then Thailand.

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