Auckland - 16/1/07

Day 2 in New Zealand, and so far things have been going pretty smoothly. I spent most of yesterday afternoon after checking into the hotel doing a walkabout of Auckland City Centre and the Viaduct Harbour. It was a glorious day - about 22 degrees with tons of sunshine. It's really strange (but comforting) that cars here also drive on the left hand side - and at the really big junctions, the neon green man is replaced by a countdown of how many seconds you have left to cross the road, accompanied by noisy buzzer sounds to chivvy you along. When I got tired of walking, I hopped onto the free City Circuit bus which does a one way loop of the main city streets and the university campus. I also discovered that it has a stop right outside my hotel, which was handy - but to be honest, I've been walking everywhere as so I probably won't be using it again.

My hotel is on Queen Street (the main road running through the CBD), so I don't have to walk far to get to most places. I'm about 20 floors up, so have a fantastic view of the skyscrapers and to the left I can see bits of the Viaduct Harbour. There's a little kitchenette in my room, but I haven't made much use of it yet, as there are tons of places to eat, e.g. loads of Asian food courts, which is where I got my dinner last night. Prices here are (to me) jaw droppingly cheap - I had a massive takeaway tray of noodles with seafood for NZ$7, which I worked out to be c. £2.60, which I scoffed watching the Kiwi equivalent of You Are What You Eat on TV. There sure are a lot of UK TV imports - Blackadder III, Coronation Street and Bob the Builder are just some examples of what I came across when channel surfing. Richard Branson keeps on popping up too, as he is in New Zealand at the moment celebrating the birthday of one of his budget airline ventures and has said that he might be interested in becoming a major shareholder in Air New Zealand which has announced lots of job cuts.

I had a low key day planned in expectation of jet lag, starting off with a visit to the East Day Spa, which is part of the huge Sky City complex (casino, hotel, shops and a convention centre). That was just sheer bliss...I could have happily stayed there for the rest of the day. I decided to have lunch down at the Viaduct Harbour at one of the waterside pubs, but opted for just a sarnie as I was due to go on a sailing cruise in the afternoon and didn't want to upchuck on anyone. However, the lamb ciabatta that I ordered was HUGE - it was more like a main course of lamb and salad, with the ciabatta slices buried somewhere beneath them. A little sparrow perched on the restaurant rope cordon, within arm's reach, and watched me eat. When I relented and chucked it a piece of bread, I suddenly got dive-bombed by 2 seagulls and other sparrows, which made me jump! Flushed with success, the little sparrow came back after a while, but now much wiser, I ignored him and eventually he gave up on me.

There are various harbour cruises, but I went with Sail NZ, which has 2 ex-America's Cup sailing yachts. Unfortunately the weather had taken a turn for the worse, so whilst it was still warm, it was overcast. It was about 78 feet long, but we were all huddled up in the stern half, as that's where the (minimal) seating (and railings!) were. It definitely wasn't built for any pleasure cruising. It was mind-boggling listening to the crew talk about the sums of money involved in sail racing at the top level - the 4 year old racing yacht that we were on was estimated to cost about NZ$1m. Then you have the costs of mooring, maintenance etc - I was gobsmacked to hear that just the mainsail of a racing yacht costs about US$130,000, and its useful life is only TEN HOURS!! I wonder what happens to the hundreds of square metres of discarded sails...