After a pretty quick flight from Nadi, we landed in Auckland - which has a pretty impressive airport I might add! The first thing we noticed, and expected, was how the climate was pretty much the same as England. After travelling across Mexico, California and Fiji - and going through multiple bottles of suncream and aloe vera - we all welcomed this. It was pretty comfortable and refreshing after being in the sun for so long. We had been told by quite a few people before we started travelling that New Zealand is pretty much a backpacker hotspot, and this was evident pretty much from the first minute.

The first night we stayed in a nice hostel just ten minutes away from the airport. The big decision between the group was whether or not we were going to get a set of wheels, and how we were going to travel across the country. We looked into pretty much every option...thinking about whether to buy or rent, what size car we would need, or even if a car wouldn't be enough, and if a camper van could have been more practical ;) After researching it all we decided to rent a car, and so far so good. We come equiped with a gorgeous Silver 1989 Nissan Sunny...with air con, and electric windows. It is at the tender age of 12 years old, and she has completed nearly 200,000 miles. Not bad though cause' we are only paying 3 pounds a day each and thats pretty good we think.

There wasn't really much for us to get up to in Aucland because we are hoping to do most of the activities (bungee, skydive, skiing fingers crossed) on the south island. However, being the explorers that we are, we headed into the city to check the place out. Auckland is a decent city, quite modern and there's loads of shops and bars etc. Just a shame that when we went to check it all out, it was sunday and a bank holiday weekend! We were going to go up the sky tower, which looks ace, and i'm sure it is ace - for the people that have been on it. But we ain't been on it so i can't tell you that it is ace, it just looks it. Unfortunately it was overcast that day and the people there told us not to bother wasting our money because we wouldn't be able to see anything. Instead, we went down to the cinemas and we saw Street Kings. Not bad i must say. The hostel that we were staying in was a bus ride away from the city, so we kicked back there that night and it was freezing - we all went to sleep in our clothes!

As you can see in our photos, we had a day out to the Kauri trees, basically this was a place that just had New Zealands tallest and largest trees. It might sound boring but it was cool to see how big they actually were. Even from the photos, you can't grasp how big these things are. The circumfrance of the widest one was about 16m we believe, so you do the math ;) As i mentioned earlier, we didn't do a great deal in Auckland, and as it was our first stop we were just eager to get going and so that's what we've done. Auckland is a cool place though, and like most of the big cities, if you had the money you could spoil yourself!