New Zealand – Auckland

15th to 18th February, 2020

Oh dear, as you have no doubt noticed, the comment ‘more soon’ at the end of the last post was a little bit of a stretch as to the term ‘soon’, but here we are again finally. Mind you, I am, of course, still typing this so it is not actually posted, but fingers crossed something will arrive in your inbox shortly.

There is a lot to catch up on as we have had a pretty full tour of New Zealand, which is, as you might have guessed, my excuse for not posting earlier. Anyway, on with the post…..

We arrived in Auckland on the Saturday, 15/2 and disembarked by about 0900. This was after repacking after 6 weeks at sea and being surprised (or should that be astonished?) by how much stuff we had. Luckily, we were being picked up by Viji, Val’s brother in his very spacious BMW who then proceeded to drive us to his house in an area quite close to Auckland called Beachlands where Radha, his wife was waiting.

They moved into this newly built house some 3 to 4 years ago, having had the plot and designed the house – and they have certainly done a wonderful job. It is very modern, very spacious and with a nice view of the sea in a wonderfully quiet street of other architect designed homes. One small problem that they were currently facing was a drought, which was especially difficult when all your water for the house comes off your roof and into the large sunken tanks in your garden. Exacerbating this was the waiting time for a top up of tanker water of some 6 weeks. As we pointed out to Viji, it will inevitably rain very heavily the day after they get their tanker water.

Viji kindly drove us around some of the local area south of Auckland, which is being rapidly developed with loads of new-build housing, although the amount according to my research only amounts to about 37,000 in the year to November 2019, though that was the highest number since the 1970s. It certainly seemed to be happening everywhere around Auckland. Most of them seemed to be a good size with few in the ‘little boxes’ category and each one was on a good-sized plot and individually designed – and not all that cheap. Indeed, we were rather surprised by the cost of things generally, especially eating out, which seemed quite a bit pricier than UK.

Val had arranged for us to meet up with some old Malaysian friends who lived locally and we all went for a meal.

We also spent some time getting much needed haircuts, walking by the sea/ocean and chatting with Viji’s neighbours Hector and Jocelyn.

And, of course, just chatting and catching up with news, interspersed with some card games. Viji then drove me to get our hire car for the next bit of our holiday, a tour of the Coromandel Peninsula.

It was a very nice stay and lovely to see Viji and Radha again.

OK, a very short post, but I need to get it posted and on to the next one, so here you go…..