We made it to New Zealand! After a 12 hour long, turbulent night flight that involved little sleep, a lot of puking on Katie's part, and a bizarre flight attendant who resembled a cross between William Shatner and Dale Winton we arrived at Auckland,feeling like crap. We got to the city centre at 10am but had to wait 4 hours to check into our hotel so we tried to stay awake by visiting the lovely Albert Park and chilling out on the grass in the sunshine (which isn't really the best way to stay awake. What we should have done was slapped each other across the face for a few hours). Somehow we managed to stay awake and when we checked into our hotel we were very pleased to get into our suite (yes, suite! No more motels full of drunkards for us.... for at least 3 days anyway). It was just round the corner from the Sky Tower,the tallest building in the southern hemisphere,so we had a nice view of that from our room. On our second night we went up the tower to check out the view,and it was very impressive. Luckily the weather conditions were good so we saw a long way out. We also saw some sky jumpers whilst up there, dangling outside the observation deck window for a few seconds before plummeting to the ground! Rather than join them we went up to the bar, and had a few drinks while the sun was setting.

Whilst in Auckland we took a day trip on the ferry to Devonport, a pretty victorian village across the harbour, and saw some local sights. We walked up Mount Victoria (an extinct volcano with excellent views of Auckland) and took a stroll to Cheltenham Beach for an ice cream and a paddle in the sea. Auckland is a nice city, with lovely surroundings and though we spent most of our few days here getting over our jet lag and taking it easy, we could have stayed a bit longer to do some more exploring in the area. It was a nice way to start off our New Zealand trip.