We were leaving Auckland today so we had a really early start just after 5am as we had a train to catch at 7am. Luckily the station was just down the road so we didn't have far to carry our stuff before we boarded The Overlander train and set off just after 7:25am.The Overlander is the oldest train in New Zealand and runs from Auckland in the North all the way to Wellington in the South. It takes 12hrs and goes over 600km through the heart of North Island.Some...

For Thursday we got an early start at 6am and went to catch a ferry to Rangitoto Island which is a 30 minute ferry trip from Auckland.Rangitoto is a volcano which erupted out of the Auckland Harbor 600 years ago, and 200 years later when it stopped, Rangitoto Island was left behind. No one lives there as its treated as a protected reserve but you can get a ferry out to it to do some hiking which is what we did. With our packs fully loaded as there is nothing o...

Today we decided that we'd visit a place called Kelly Tarltons Antarctic Adventure which is just outside the centre of Auckland. Its basically an Arctic version of a Sealife Centre which was created by a Kiwi called Kelly Tarlton.As we don't have a car hired at the moment we walked to the Sky Tower in the morning and caught a free shuttle bus with a load of backpackers to Kelly Tarltons. It was basically a transit van done up with a model shark and penguins on ...

Clear of the jet-lag and with stronger painkillers for Em we set out today, starting at the Sky Tower in Auckland which was a short walk from our hotel. We had another jolt of how friendly Kiwi's are when on only our 2nd visit to the coffee shop near our hotel, the chap serving us remembered us from the day before! Very cool!The Sky Tower in an icon in Auckland, mainly because its the tallest tower in the Southern Hemisphere. It's 328m tall which is taller tha...

OK, we've had some sleep now so its time to update the blog again.Our first day in Auckland was a looooooooooong one! Like we said on the previous entry, we landed at 6am local time but when we tried to check in they didn't have any rooms ready so we had to wait. This wouldn't have been a problem as we expected as much but we ended up waiting until 15:30 to get in, by which time we were both a wee bit knackered. Em was not well at all so we were glad to finall...