This was written three months ago in the height of winter. Summer Edition coming Soon!!
I am currently sitting on a cheap brown sofa, in a studio apartment, on the sixth floor, along Anzac Avenue, in Auckland, New Zealand. There is a cyclone raging at present, and gifts from other people's balconies are now scattered on mine. So far, I have obtained 3 pegs, one pot plant and a pair of pale yellow knickers. Who wears yellow knickers?! In fact, who leaves their washing out during a cyclone?!
If you are ever planning on travelling to the bottom right corner of the mapped world, DO NOT come in winter (June until September) Luckily for my boyfriend and I, our plan was to work and save in Auckland for a few months, before we purchase a smelly, second-hand camper van to travel the rest of the country. Un-luckily for us, we did not realise how tropical the weather can be, especially in winter! Even after living in England for 4 years. I've never got so wet (and dont be rude). Somehow the rain gets underneath your umbrella and slaps your face. I spend the majority of the winter months looking like a drowned rat with mascara streaks.
Auckland has been kind to us so far, apart from the weather. We managed to find a studio apartment to rent for three months, and although all the appliances were broken and the room smelt like a teenage boy with cheesey feet had lived there before us, it is home for the moment. I found work relatively quickly, first hiring out graduating gowns to graduating students of Auckland University, then wrapping presents for five days. I wrapped one thousand, five hundred mugs in three days. Not many people can say the same.
My current job was found through a temping agency,which is general administration for a bus company. Boyf was also quite lucky, he is a chef, and found a job at a professional's cafe, where they make the muesli from scratch.
If the jet lag caused by a twenty-nine hour flight was not disorientating enough, we arrived in Auckland to find we were on the eighth floor of a backpacking lodge where the lift did not work, so up the stairs we went with our overly-packed suitcases.
As soon as we left the airport, Auckland turned out to be pretty unexpected. It was clean with ferns growing from the buildings, the traffic lights (or robots, as we Southern Africans say) took forever to turn green and when they did, people in the hundreds and thousands came out of the woodwork and crossed the road. Aucklanders must spend at least half their day waiting for "robots' to go green. And when they finally do, the roads have hell to pay with at least 300 people crossing them in haste.
Auckland is known for its high-rise buildings and many people, living in the city, live in apartments. We dropped off our luggage and headed out to explore the city. The city was bustling with so many different cultures, especially Asian, along with backpackers looking at their maps and harrassing the bus drivers for directions.
We walked down the amazingly long Queen Street and were laughably shocked at the amount of 'erotic massage' and 'private karaoke' businesses along the way. We were later to find out that prostitution is legal in New Zealand. Even with the amount of legal brothels in and around Auckland, it seems to lack the seediness, places like Amsterdam thrive on.We walked to the harbour, saw the Auckland Bridge and basked in the last of the autumn sunshine, while eating not-so-cheap ice-cream.One or two homeless people sat in derelict doorways, sniffing their glue and going about their day.
By that point I was dying for a glass of wine and we went to every Co-op we could find. None of them sold any alcohol. We had to go to a 'proper' liquor store and even then, they would not sell me anything because I did not have my passport to prove my age. They would not accept my driver's licence (of which I am extremely proud), as it was "foreign". Haha, I laughed. Finally we were "foreigners".So I had to go without. We went back to our lodge and went to the communal lounge with our laptop and started to look for jobs and apartments.
As we logged onto the communal broadband, a familiar accent greeted us. An Ex-Kiwi, who had been living in London for 12years said something about the broadband being slow. We started chatting and found out he was married to an English girl and had come back "home" to visit his mum for a few weeks. And as much as he loved his mum, he couldnt bare to stay at her house so had booked into the lodge too. Jason was his name and he introduced us to Auckland in a special way. Before he did that, he managed to sort out our laptop and load over 10 of the latest movies from his laptop onto ours. Turns out Jason is a top IT consultant for a prestigious company (He also developed the Harry Potter computer game) and where others would pay him £300 an hour for his services, he gave us a freebie.Jason told us all about life in New Zealand and took us to the best Schwarma place in Auckland, introduced us to Spirulina (a smoothie made with seaweed-one of my favourite drinks now) and took us to "the Thirsty Dog", where we watched a few bands play. We never saw him again after that night but his kindness won't be forgotton. Top bloke!
