Hello from aukland! yipeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee i was allowed on the plane. what a relief! Arrived late on thurs night so had a full day exploring on friday. The four of us, plus tom who we met in fiji and happened to be arriving in aukland the same day, and his friend tom (funny) went for breakie then decided to go to the aquarium. However couldnt get on the free shuttle bus so went to the sky tower (on pic) its the tallest tower in the southern hemisphere apparently. We discovered you could do a vertigo climb! This involves walking up a very long ladder on the inside then looking out over aukland on top. It was something like $145 to do it, but we haggled him down to $75 as there were 5 of us willing and got free pics too! We had an hour or two to kill so went down to the harbour and had a good look around- its absolutely gorgeous- the sun was shining, there were big fancy yatchs everywhere- so we picked a bar and had a lager- i chose one called wicked blonde- ha!. So...at 4 pm we donned our orange boiler suits (which were gorgeous...not!) and went up to the viewing tower in a lift. It had rained and there was a huge rainbow over aukland- AMAZING. You can also do a base jump off the building- we watched a few guys bottle it! ha.- defo not my cup of tea! You then go inside the building shaft and climb a very long ladder to the top and out of a hatch which brought us outside the towen on a ledge literally next to the spike standing on a grill! yikes. Thank got there was a railing. We have some fab pics! ha. after this we watched the sun go down from the viewing tower then headed off to find dinner- we went to a recommended fish restaurant on the harbour side- a little posh for us mere backpackers, but its our first night so- we thought what the hell- still a million times cheaper than the equivalent in england. I had seared snapper on a bed of seafood rissotto! yum! went for a few cheap drinks near hostel- then bed.