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The Northlands - Auckland and everything after

Auckland was wet and rainy. We went in search of a beer and maybe a burger joint, but at 8pm on a Sunday night, it’s fair to say the city was pretty lifeless and finding a decent looking pub was much harder than you might think in New Zealand’s financial capital.

We had just followed the Lonely Planet guide to the biggest cluster of places-of-interest of the central Auckland map. Predictably, it lead us to a Starbucks, an STA travel and an Irish pub, all of which were open but empty.

We gravitated towards the Sky Tower, the tallest building in the southern hemisphere where I took my only photo in Auckland. Had we just ended up in the wrong part of Auckland or was the whole city this dead after 5pm? We ended up heading right back to the YHA not before picking up some medicinal beers from the off-licence opposite.

From New Zealand

The next morning, the weather was crap, I’d already decided I didn’t really like Auckland, or at least couldn’t be assed hanging around in a cold city, so we headed north to the Bay of Islands.

It was a log drive, and after a couple of stop-offs, it was dark when we arrived in Paihia. The place was dead. I began to realise that coming to New Zealand in the off-season could mean that much of the North Island might well be like this.

After cooking our first camper-van meal, we parked up in a random car-park and went to bed. I woke up many times through the night very cold, which was not ideal given I still had a stinking cold but fortunately (for Oli more than me perhaps) my coughing fits had started to subside.

The Lonely Planet describes the Bay of Islands as “a winterless wonderland”. We woke up to torrential flooding, storms and rain. It was clear that there would be no boats sailing the Bay of islands today. It was clear the the lonely planet was full of shit.

Before we left, we took a photo of the Bay of Islands. It’s by no means postcard perfect. In fact I think this could possibly be the worst photo of the Bay of Islands ever and this time it was nothing to do with my photography skills. Here it is!

From New Zealand

We thought it might be a good idea to keep headed north to Cape Reigna at the very top. For one, it would be closer (ok, not much) to the equator so might be warmer, but also meant we could indulge ourselves in the usual tourist attractions of the north island; driving the 90 mile beach and sandboarding on the dunes. Also, driving north meant we would have a second chance to visit the Bay of Islands on the way back down and hopefully then the weather would have improved.

Well, after driving 80km further north, there was no sign of the storms letting up. Even our little camper van was shaking all over the road in the winds. If anything, it was getting worse. We got to the point where the road was flooded (this is not just a back road by the way, this is State Highway 1). As we attempted to drive through the flooded road, 2 cars, that we coming the other way stopped us to say “it’s all flooded further North. Go back while you still can”.

So that’s what we did. Drove all the way back down to where we started. 2 wasted days and all we had to show for it was very unique photo of the Bay of Islands and a $140 speeding ticket that Oli managed to obtain whilst I was sleeping in the passenger seat.

From New Zealand