13/7/9 Auckland-Aotearoa/Land of The Long White Cloud

Hello readers. Sorry for the gap in our travel update, we have been really busy enjoying ourselves as you will read and are now going to update things so you will be up to date. It takes a long a time to write the blog and absolutely ages to upload the photos so bear with us.... today is actually the 28/7/9 and so this is all back dated then we should be back on track.

During our flight from Santiago we jumped forward 24 hours so have missed 12/7/9 and are here on the 13th. We both slept a bit on the plane but were pretty tired when we landed at 4am local time. We waited a couple of hours to catch the first bus into town to the hostel we were using right in the middle of town. We had landed in civilisation with hot showers with no electric shocks, central heating, internet access, a travel desk, two cinema rooms and on site laundry!!! Never been so pleased to see a washing machine!!! We were going to get a few hours sleep and then go out exploring befroe going for a bargain pizza in the hostels bar...we actually slept until 4pm so were more tired than we thought. We went to the travel desk to arrange our bus seats for the next few days but then spotted a sign advertising the All Blacks vs Australia Tri Nations rugby match at Eden Park so we decided to try for some tickets. Thomas the guy organising the tickets told us that some people hadn't paid for the tickets so we had a good chance of getting some but he couldn't confirm until the next day. We decided to take a risk and handed over some cash to secure any spare tickets, as we were leaving Auckland early the next day for a short visit to the Bay of islands. We would have to wait until match day to find out if tickets were available. We went to the bar to eat our pizzas and an obligatory beer but were still pretty knackered so went for an early night as we had a really early bus in the morning. Before bed Phil called a couple of friends from Worcester who have both emigrated to NZ to see if we could meet them later in the trip. They were pleased to hear from him and we are meeting up soon.