Little Britain
Auckland is not the place to spend much time. This is what my Kiwi friends advised me long before I arrived. I thought that as I'd experienced many unpleasant places in my life (e.g. Woking) then this would not be as bad as they made it out to be. They were right, of course.
As soon as I landed here 5 days ago my friends whisked me off to the North of the North Island to see a place called the Bay Of Islands. This is almost like an archipelago of inhabited islands and the day after the rain finally stopped we took a boat cruise out into the bay and saw some dolphins. This was lovely and being winter time and very far South the light gave everything a strange luminous quality. Unfortunately we had little time to spend there as one of my friends had to return to Auckland for his flight out. We came back and I have been here now for about 3 days. This is more than enough. It's problem is that it has no charisma or charm. Yes, there are decent places to stay, eat, sleep but after these you wonder what you'd like to do this afternoon or tonight and you realise that there's nothing really going on. In the hostel I'm staying in one of the top-billed attractions is leaping from the platform atop the Sky Tower whilst attached to a wire. Simulated suicide.
I did take someone's advice and spent an afternoon accross the bay in a suburb called Devonport. This is a charming place and the weather even held off for a bit. It's the current base for the RNZN (the navy) and has a very eerie English town feel to it. Strolling around it took little time and I even managed to walk up one of the volcano cones for an impressive view of the Auckland CBD and Devonport itself. The Navy Museum is here too and was impressive, if you like that sort of thing.
Hanging from the streetlamps in the main street of Devonport were Union Jack flags advertising a "Best Of British" weekend coming up. What this entails I do not know but I cannot imagine the Aussies caring much for it. In other words it's strange for me to travel so far and see my country being treated without distain. Unless you're a Lions' supporter of course.
In order to fill a morning, today my friend and I decided to do a coast-to-coast walk as documented by the City of Auckland Tourist Board. Auckland straddles, or rather squats, astride a narrow promitory of land in the North Island. It's about 9km wide at its narrowest point. The walk map details a route taking in all the "features" of Auckland and went on for about 16km. Easy.
After making a wrong turn because of the hopeless signposts I took in some of the sights of Downtown. The container port and the endless car rental firms guided us up a small hill past a construction site towards what seemed like miles of suburbs. I'm sure this bloody map was sponsored by a real estate agent as 80% of the walk involved walking off the main roads in the housing where there are many big Edwardian houses behind fences and bugger-all else.
Occassionally we were allowed to walk in one of the parks which were good; certainly very green and well maintained. In a couple of these parks there are more volcanic cones and the views from the top of them were good. They kept sheep in one of the parks, wild New Zealand sheep - very dangerous, and I played my favourite game of Avoid-The-Poo.
We carried on through the pouring rain, me wearing my T-shirt, and decided it would be good to break the journey up by lunching at the Texaco at the end of this road. I enjoyed a working lunch of pie. After the feast the rain stopped and the gales blew. This was good as even though I could not feel my hands I was drying quickly. More suburbs and we eventually spied the coast.
We had made it accross the island in only 4 hours! Our finishing marker was in a place that on paper sounds fine: "Onehunga Bay". I could not see a bay but the graffitti-covered sign said that it was. A large stagnant pool of seawater stretched majestically for about 40m right up to the 8-lane freeway that bypasses this city. Behind my shoulders the electricity pylons crackled and drew my gaze down to the ghetto of autoparts shops and industrial units. As you might imagine, walking 16km through the rain just to reach the arse end of a charmless city put me in a sparkling mood. My friend and I decided to go for a sandwich. Far away.
Finding sheep in a public park would be strange anywhere else but not here. Last night I discovered sheep on Sky Sports. They had full coverage of the Sheepdog Trials held somewhere here before the coverage of the British Open. To be fair watching sheep run around in circles is more interesting than golf, but it tends to send me to sleep more quickly. The punditry in the Sheepdog Trials was amusing. One of their star guests was a rep from a dog food company. I can't wait for the dope scandals.
Calling NZ a "Little Britain" at this stage is probably far from the truth as I've only seen a tiny pocket of the North. I fly to Christchurch in the South Island tomorrow which should bring even colder weather but more interesting scenery. And lots of sheep.
As soon as I landed here 5 days ago my friends whisked me off to the North of the North Island to see a place called the Bay Of Islands. This is almost like an archipelago of inhabited islands and the day after the rain finally stopped we took a boat cruise out into the bay and saw some dolphins. This was lovely and being winter time and very far South the light gave everything a strange luminous quality. Unfortunately we had little time to spend there as one of my friends had to return to Auckland for his flight out. We came back and I have been here now for about 3 days. This is more than enough. It's problem is that it has no charisma or charm. Yes, there are decent places to stay, eat, sleep but after these you wonder what you'd like to do this afternoon or tonight and you realise that there's nothing really going on. In the hostel I'm staying in one of the top-billed attractions is leaping from the platform atop the Sky Tower whilst attached to a wire. Simulated suicide.
I did take someone's advice and spent an afternoon accross the bay in a suburb called Devonport. This is a charming place and the weather even held off for a bit. It's the current base for the RNZN (the navy) and has a very eerie English town feel to it. Strolling around it took little time and I even managed to walk up one of the volcano cones for an impressive view of the Auckland CBD and Devonport itself. The Navy Museum is here too and was impressive, if you like that sort of thing.
Hanging from the streetlamps in the main street of Devonport were Union Jack flags advertising a "Best Of British" weekend coming up. What this entails I do not know but I cannot imagine the Aussies caring much for it. In other words it's strange for me to travel so far and see my country being treated without distain. Unless you're a Lions' supporter of course.
In order to fill a morning, today my friend and I decided to do a coast-to-coast walk as documented by the City of Auckland Tourist Board. Auckland straddles, or rather squats, astride a narrow promitory of land in the North Island. It's about 9km wide at its narrowest point. The walk map details a route taking in all the "features" of Auckland and went on for about 16km. Easy.
After making a wrong turn because of the hopeless signposts I took in some of the sights of Downtown. The container port and the endless car rental firms guided us up a small hill past a construction site towards what seemed like miles of suburbs. I'm sure this bloody map was sponsored by a real estate agent as 80% of the walk involved walking off the main roads in the housing where there are many big Edwardian houses behind fences and bugger-all else.
Occassionally we were allowed to walk in one of the parks which were good; certainly very green and well maintained. In a couple of these parks there are more volcanic cones and the views from the top of them were good. They kept sheep in one of the parks, wild New Zealand sheep - very dangerous, and I played my favourite game of Avoid-The-Poo.
We carried on through the pouring rain, me wearing my T-shirt, and decided it would be good to break the journey up by lunching at the Texaco at the end of this road. I enjoyed a working lunch of pie. After the feast the rain stopped and the gales blew. This was good as even though I could not feel my hands I was drying quickly. More suburbs and we eventually spied the coast.
We had made it accross the island in only 4 hours! Our finishing marker was in a place that on paper sounds fine: "Onehunga Bay". I could not see a bay but the graffitti-covered sign said that it was. A large stagnant pool of seawater stretched majestically for about 40m right up to the 8-lane freeway that bypasses this city. Behind my shoulders the electricity pylons crackled and drew my gaze down to the ghetto of autoparts shops and industrial units. As you might imagine, walking 16km through the rain just to reach the arse end of a charmless city put me in a sparkling mood. My friend and I decided to go for a sandwich. Far away.
Finding sheep in a public park would be strange anywhere else but not here. Last night I discovered sheep on Sky Sports. They had full coverage of the Sheepdog Trials held somewhere here before the coverage of the British Open. To be fair watching sheep run around in circles is more interesting than golf, but it tends to send me to sleep more quickly. The punditry in the Sheepdog Trials was amusing. One of their star guests was a rep from a dog food company. I can't wait for the dope scandals.
Calling NZ a "Little Britain" at this stage is probably far from the truth as I've only seen a tiny pocket of the North. I fly to Christchurch in the South Island tomorrow which should bring even colder weather but more interesting scenery. And lots of sheep.