Auckland

The flight from L.A. to Auckland was around 12 hours. It was an awesome plane, but a pretty uncomfortable ride. During the flight, I met some new friends going to the uni in Dunedin. The security wasn’t too bad, it was just early in the morning and I was already exhausted. As soon as my mom and I got to Auckland, we knew we had 2 things on the list: get a phone, buy a car and we managed to that all in one day.  We got a pretty decent car, it’s a Toyota Caldina, which is a station wagon. Almost every other car in NZ seems to be a station wagon… its weird but when you think about it, gas is pretty high so SUVs probably aren’t that high in demand as they are in the US. Our first day in NZ was very hectic to say the least… first off the weather hasn’t been the best :/ It feels great, 60-70s, but it has rained for the past few days with tiny pockets of sunshine.  Secondly, learning how to drive on the opposite side of the road is very very confusing! During our two days in Auckland we walked up and down Queens St. and High St. (both of which remind me of New York City because of the shopping, architecture and around almost every corner is a mini china town), we road a ferry to an island called Devonport with two inactive volcanoes, and we tried the cuisine (one was absolutely horrible and the other time was fairly decent).  Auckland was a really beautiful city, but it was very westernized and I didn’t come here to see cities that look the exact same as every other city in the US. The city centre for the most part was walkable. Most of the tourists here seem to be European.

For those of you who thought that nz may not compare to the US in what they have to offer, you’d be quite surprised. NZ has a walmart called the warehouse and an heb/central market/whole foods called the countdown and a krogers called pak’n’save and plenty of department stores and gas stations in every larger town we’ve driven through. There’s a Mcdonalds and burger king around every corner too.

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