Hiya everyone!!

Apologies for the lack of blogging but as most of you probably know, I have been working at my hostel in the mornings and so haven't had much to reprt back on!! However, I am finally starting my travelling on Monday so thought now would be a good time to give you an update on the little things that I have done over the past 5 weeks!!

BLOCKHOUSE BAY

Sue and Peter live in Blockhouse Bay, which is in the south west of Auckland, and I spent an afternoon going around the local area with Sue! We went down to the local beach, which is a small bay that gets pretty busy in the summer! We also drove around the coast which had some beautiful views of the coast! Then we head to the Butterfly Garden which is a small area of gardens with benches and paths and a small butterfly house! Unfortunately as its now autumn, there weren't too many flowers out but we did get to see one butterfly!!

MUSEUM

The Auckland War Museum is actually quite near where I am staying and so I went with Tony and Elizabeth one afternoon! It is an amazing building within an area called The Domain which overlooks the city! We started off going to the Winter Gardens, which had some beautiful flowers in, along with some huge water lilies and even some peppers!! We then headed over to the actual museum! Around the outside it has all the places that the New Zealand army have fought in engraved into the stone! Inside, there are 3 levels- the bottom is mainly Mauri culture, the second is land and sea and the third level is the war section! The Mauri culture level was amazing with so many artifacts from the original Mauri tribes!! Some of them- for example wooden pillows- were very different to what we have today! They had plenty of the carved poles that are often around tribes and even had a replica Mauri house which has basically built out of these carved poles!! They also had a huge boat which was probably about 30/40m long!! Tony was telling me that it would have been built out of one tree trunk, and after seeing the tools the had for cutting trees, its pretty impressive!! We then headed up to the second level which had a lot of information on volcanoes- makes sense seeing as most of the island is built on or surrounded by them!! We went into a make shift living room and you get to experience what a volcano would feel like and they have a huge screen overlooking the harbour towards Rangitoto!! Unfortunately we then ran out of time but I went back on a different day to look at the War section! Again its very impressive and has some amazing tributes to all the soldiers who died during some of the wars!

MOTHERS DAY

Over here they celebrate mothers day on a different day to back home and Sue and Peter were kind enough to invite me for dinner with their family on the sunday evening! I got to meet another 20 members of their family, which was slightly daunting but a lovely evening! They were all really friendly and one of the couples who have a house on Waikiki Island have invited me over for a weekend if I get the chance once I get back to Auckland!

KELLY TARLTON

Kelly Tartlon is an underground aquarium in East Auckland and on one of my days off I headed there with Elizabeth!! After a drive along the coast to a couple of lookouts and some lunch along the seafront, we headed to Kelly Tarltons! I wasn't expecting too much but it was actually a really nice aquarium!! One thing that is slightly different is they have a little museum with stuff from the first few South pole expeditions!! They also have a penguin sections which was amazing!! You sit in a little train carriage and they take you around where the penguins live!! So cute!! Within the aquarium they also have the biggest sting rays I have ever seen!! They were literally over 2m long!! They also had plenty of smaller fish to look at as well as the ugliest eels I have ever seen!!

MT EDEN

I finally managed to get up to Mt Eden on a ncie day to watch the sunset!! Mt Eden has a huge crater at the top which was caused by the previous eruption, but you can't climb down into it!! It does however have some amazing views of the city and Rangitoto Island! Unfortunately, the sunset isn't inline with either of these, but it was a beautiful sunset!! The climb up wasn't actually too bad and the entrance to the hill is only in the next street to my hostel!!

KIWI EXPERIENCE- AUCKLAND

Today I went on a free tour around Auckland with the Kiwi Experience!! Mainly I wanted something to do on my day off but also I wanted to get a few bits of advice from KE!! We headed straight to the harbour bridge and we got to walk out to about a third of the way along the bridge to where people can bungy jump over the water!! Its a 40m bungy and there were 2 people who jumped when we were there!! They had literally just arrived in Auckland off the plane and had come to visit their brother who had booked it as a surprise!! The girls was pretty scared and almost didn't do it but they both did!! We then headed over the bridge (in the bus) to Devonport for some lunch (fish and chips obviously!!)! We then went up North Head and Mt Victoria!! I had already been up Mt Victoria, when I went over with Sue and Elizabeth but it was nice to go up again and get some more pictures!!

Well thats about it I think!! Other than these things I have mainly spent time at Oaklands-my hostel!! Its a nice small hostel with some lovely people and even has a lovely ginger cat (I saw lovely, he always looks angry and does smell quite a bit but we love Cosmo)!! Tomorrow, I am going to go to another Blues rugby game at Eden Park (with my camera this time), then on Saturday I am having a few drinks with people from the hostel, packing on Sunday before starting my travelling on Monday!! Literally cannot wait, especially as I got a guide book today which has all the details of the KE journey in it!! Monday I will be heading north from Auckland up to a place called Paihia (pronounced Pie-here) then doing a day trip up to Cape Reinga, an extra day in Paihia before back to Auckland for the night and then heading down south!! Bt don;t worry I will keep you updated as I go along!!

Sending lots of Oaklands love

xxxx