Auckland

We left Rapa Nui at 9.30am on Friday, the flight was 6 hours to Santaigo where we had to wait 8 hours for our 12 hour flight to Auckland - bloody marvellous! We arrived at 5.30am on Sunday morning and, fortunately for us, they let us check in to our apartment at 8am instead of 2pm - phew, what a relief! We were determined to beat jet lag so we stayed awake all day and went to bed about 9pm and it has worked - hooray.

So far we have joined the throngs of Christmas shoppers on Queen Street - our apartment is not far away in the middle (it feels) of Auckland University - and generally mooched about. The city has some fine old buildings that are completely engulfed by huge tower blocks and there is a lot of building work going on including Auckland's first underground railway. The overall feeling of the area we are staying is we could be in Hong Kong - every supermarket is Chinese, the restaurants are mainly Chinese, Korean or Japanese and so are the people on the street.

We also took a 10 minute boat ride to Devonport which is a quaint old fashioned little town with a small beach - a very white middle class place - oh and some birds for Mandy!

Wendy remebers this from her childhood (that's got be 60years!)
Apparently this is the last year they will be up as storage is too expensive

Our first NZ craft beer

Devonport