Today started still en route to Auckland! I managed to sleep for an hour or so before midnight, then went on to watch Inception - I'm surprised I hadn't seen it before or that none of my friends raved about it - or maybe they did but I was too busy with work? Anyway, great film - I kind of liked the ambiguity at the end, leavning us never quite sure.
After that I managed to find a pen to borrow so I could complete my NZ Arrival documentation - though it wasn't easy to write, given that there was quite a bit of turbulance. I managed to complete it now though so no last minute panics in 10 hours time!
Another nap, and then I felt hungry (to be honest I have no idea what actually time it really is - as per advice, as soon as I left Dubai, I set my phone to NZ time zone, so being hungry at 2am was probably me being hungry at 1pm, which makes sense - anyway, a pizza snack arrived as if by magic (maybe it was the smell of pizza that alerted me, which happened first? Hmm).
I managed to get another 2 hour long naps, I think I'll watch another movie.
Star trek, just in time for landing . Temperature is 16'C patchy rain and maybe hall, I thought I just left the Scottish climate!
The first thing I noticed when I got off the plane was that rather than the signs being bilingual with English/Mauri, it appeared to be English/Chinese. This was also very prevalent in Auckland City later
After collecting my rucksack, one of the sniffer dogs seemed to be taking a keen interest in my hand luggage, and it was discovered that he had taking a liking to Nessie - still doing her job :-D
Passport control was as per any other, then I had to hand my tent over to be checked by biosecurity. I got it back but had to repack it.
Now that I'm back with my rucksack I get the impression I'm going to be very fit after this tour - carry 20kg on my back every day - though I suspect once I've got in to the swing of things, most of the stuff will be in locker storage for the times that I'm out being a tourist.
I made it in to the city center and discovered all the IYHA hostels were fully booked for today, so decided to opt for my initial backup plan of pitching a tent in Paihia.
There was some communication difficulties whe nI was trying to describe the kind of bus ticket I was looking for but I eventually opted for a pass that gave me 25 hours worth of travel, which should cover the north island fairly well - and I can decide on what I want to do further as I do that - my first priority is to get up to Paihia now though, get the tent set up, lock up my bags, and then probably sleep for 10 hours!
Bus is scheduled to arrive in Paihia for 8pm, so just now I am sat in the cafe outside the bus stance, enjoying a cheese and ham toastie :)
Missed some good City Skyline photo ops on way out of Auckland, as chose wrong side of bus to sit on, however, have noticed that there appear to be bus only roads here, which seems like a good idea - something similar is being trialled in Glasgow just now.
The bus arrived in to Paihia late, at 8.30 pm, and it was already dark, so I fished out y torch and headed up to the campsite, 1km or so north. Paihia is definitely a coastal tourism town from what I can tell so far!
Despite saying that reception is open to late in the infoI had, when I got there it said reception closed at 4pm, but to set up anyway and register before 9.30 am.
I had a nice chat with someone else who had just got there 15 minutes earlier to find out if he knew which section was which but as he had as mentioned got there 15 minutes earlier, didn't know. I decided that for the sake of $4NZ I didn't mind, so found a spot where other tents were, and set up camp.
Once the tent was up I decided to take some photos, and found I had a visitor akready - not quite sure what it was, I'll have to ask the natives in the morning! It looked a bit like a hedgehog!
It was now about 9.40pm , so I decided to try and get some much needed shut-eye
THat lasted till 1.30am, when I was awoken due to needing the loo, so found that. There was some creature in the dark making a hoarse hissing sound, but it didn't appear to be coming closer.
I managed to get back to sleep shortly after that again, and am now awake at 5.30am to the sound of some birds calling each other with an interesting musical hooting sound.