Hello, Auckland? Is anyone out there???

Yes, we know that there are in fact more than one million people in Auckland, but it just doesn't seem like New Zealand's biggest city. It feels more like a moderately-sized town, such as Leamington Spa. Even Minehead where I grew up (population c.10,000) has a wider main street, for goodness sake.

I suppose this sense of an overblown village is exacerbated by the contrast with Hong Kong, which we left on Tuesday evening. Hong Kong was hot, humid, teeming with people and full of high-rise buildings, bearing down on us as we wandered around.

Compare that to Auckland. Looking out of the windows of the airport bus, no building seemed to rise above two floors and most houses appeared to be bungalows. The temperature was decidedly cool at around 18 degrees Celsius (64 fahrenheit) and quite breezy to add a bit of a chill.

The biggest difference, however, is the sense of emptiness and the lack of anything going on. Most of the shops seem to shut at 5 or 6pm and trying to find one that sold beer took us half the evening. The bars and restaurants advertise the fact that they close at about 10.30pm. Is this Britain in the 1960s or1970s???

That said, we had a perfectly good first evening here. We wandered up the road and found a proper pub - with its own micro-brewery, no less. We sampled the Old Gobbo (honest!), Falstaff and a treacly dark beer, and were quite set to dine and spend the rest of the evening there. We were even contemplating entering the pub quiz that was due to start at 7.30pm (any later and people would have gone home) and wondering what to call our team name. 'Just Landed' was probably the best option, especially as we would probably have scored zero on anything related to local history, culture, politics etc.

That plan, however, had to be abandoned due to what appears to be the largely carnivorous nature of the local population. We looked at the extensive bar menu and found the only vegetarian option for Katy was something with feta cheese (which she doesn't like much) or a bowl of chips. We tried to order a special of vegetarian nachos, but the chef reportedly only had the ingredients for beef nachos. Yes, try to work that one out.. So even though the chips came with tomato sauce, we headed off to a Thai restaurant down the road.

The menu seemed ok, though the building itself looked a bit iffy. When we got upstairs, however, we found ourselves in an elegant four-room restaurant packed with locals. The food was excellent - especially my Green Lip Mussel soup, which contained mussels the size of chicken breasts - and we stuffed ourselves good and proper. (Though not so much as the couple at the next table who ordered three enormous dishes and shovelled them down before we were halfway through ours.)

I'm writing this as we sit in bed in our hotel room watching the best of New Zealand television - well, the five channels to which we have access. Now, I might be about to make an unfair observation because we have missed Coronation Street, Neighbours, Friends and other such familiar programmes which were on earlier. But at the moment, the single most riveting programme on the TV is…

A constant feed of the CCTV camera located by the entrance to the hotel!

Seriously, it's fascinating watching cars exit the multi-storey car park opposite, complete strangers walk past and the arms of hotel guests as they swipe their entry cards to gain access. The rest of the country's television output just pales into insignificance by comparison.

We've decided to set our alarms so that we don't miss the excitement of people heading out into the city in the morning - though what they will do there, we have no idea.

Ok, that last sentence isn't true. We're setting our alarms because we have to start looking at camper vans (and hopefully buy one) asap. That's the plan, anyway, though we're a bit rubbish when it comes to jet-lag, so we shall see…

PS

We've finally discovered what New Zealanders - or Aucklanders at least - do in their spare time. Auckland appears to be the sex shop capital of the southern hemisphere, if not the entire world! Our hotel, which is just off the city's main street and not in some seedy backwater, is flanked by them. Other outlets are dotted around the equivalent of Oxford Street, and in one stretch just out of the centre we found five sex shops in a row. The next premises was - and I'm not joking in the slightest here - was a launderette. Think of that what you will.

PPS

We have found a camper van!!! More details in the next blog

Richard