We boarded a flight to New Zealand at 11:30 on 7 January
2013 and found ourselves in New Zealand around three hours later (although the
time difference with the UK is now +13 hours) along the way meeting a hilarious
customs officer who gave us the classic New Zealand slang “sweet as, bro” when we
declared the vegemite and green tea in our rucksacks at customs.
We arrived in Auckland Airport and saw signs stating “Kia
Ora to New Zealand” – Welcome to New Zealand in Maori (the New Zealand was also
in Maori but I cannot remember what it is – something like Aeotorea). We caught
a skybus to Auckland CBD which didn’t take too long and we soon found our
hostel (X Base – which proudly has the 17th highest bar in Auckland!).
We booked two nights in a four bed hostel (we’re on a shoe string budget) which
took some getting used to after the last few weeks we spent in our own room in
a house. The couple we shared with seemed nice though, a football coach from
the UK and his Mexican girlfriend he met whilst teaching football in Mexico.
We spent the first evening having a little walk around
Auckland, the CBD is quite small and there are a lot of homeless people around,
and we saw why it is known as the “City of Sails” – it’s super windy! Sea on
both sides of the city I believe which makes for an extremely windswept CBD. As
we have booked a tour of Hobbiton, the site of The Shire in Lord of the Rings
and The Hobbit, we decided to go and watch The Hobbit in HFR (high frame rate,
48 frames per second as opposed to the standard 24 frames) in Auckland as
preparation. After paying nearly $40 NZD we went to the cinema and watched the
movie. I enjoyed, as did Nicola, the HFR took some getting used to – at times
it looked like it was in fast forward and the fight scenes looked like they
were from a computer game – but overall it was a good movie, no LotR, but good,
despite adding a lot of new material that was not in the book; explains how
they are taking a book the size of one part of LotR and making it into three,
three hour movies.
We arrived in Auckland Airport and saw signs stating “Kia
Ora to New Zealand” – Welcome to New Zealand in Maori (the New Zealand was also
in Maori but I cannot remember what it is – something like Aeotorea). We caught
a skybus to Auckland CBD which didn’t take too long and we soon found our
hostel (X Base – which proudly has the 17th highest bar in Auckland!).
We booked two nights in a four bed hostel (we’re on a shoe string budget) which
took some getting used to after the last few weeks we spent in our own room in
a house. The couple we shared with seemed nice though, a football coach from
the UK and his Mexican girlfriend he met whilst teaching football in Mexico. 
We spent the first evening having a little walk around
Auckland, the CBD is quite small and there are a lot of homeless people around,
and we saw why it is known as the “City of Sails” – it’s super windy! Sea on
both sides of the city I believe which makes for an extremely windswept CBD. As
we have booked a tour of Hobbiton, the site of The Shire in Lord of the Rings
and The Hobbit, we decided to go and watch The Hobbit in HFR (high frame rate,
48 frames per second as opposed to the standard 24 frames) in Auckland as
preparation. After paying nearly $40 NZD we went to the cinema and watched the
movie. I enjoyed, as did Nicola, the HFR took some getting used to – at times
it looked like it was in fast forward and the fight scenes looked like they
were from a computer game – but overall it was a good movie, no LotR, but good,
despite adding a lot of new material that was not in the book; explains how
they are taking a book the size of one part of LotR and making it into three,
three hour movies.
Due to the late showing we got back to the hostel around
01:00 and spent a very sleepless night (my pillow felt like it had been laminated)
waiting for our alarm to go off as we planned to visit a nearby island in the
morning.
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