Auckland

So we only had a couple of days in Auckland before our three month holiday visas ran out. After a rather exhausive trail of the hostels looking for somewhere that would allow us to stay in our van, we eventually found a place, but on a wickedly sloping road. After a fair bit of deliberation we decided to give it a go, and in fact it turned out grand. We were in a nice part of the city too.

Didn't do too much over our two days - strolled about one day, popping into the impressive National Musuem, and watched the cultural show. I saw the same show the last time I was in Auckland, but as I remember it was free then, and much more impressive. Maybe it was because it was low season, and there were very few people for the show, but for the big finale, the Haka, they only had three lads, and so had to flesh out the performance with the three ladies. Needless to say, this wasn't anything like as impressive as the last time I saw it, as then they had a full complement of big, scary, imposing looking warrior dudes. Ah well, the rest of the museum was good.

We checked out the landmark Auckland tower of course, the SkyTower. Didn't bother paying to go up it though, as we'd had great city views the day before from the top of Mount Eden (which has a pretty cool, albeit small, extinct volcanic crater). Didn't bother with the sky jump thing either, as it looked a bit tame really. I thought the SkyWalk thing looked pretty cool though - trust the New Zealanders to come up with that one (given that there have been similar observation towers all over Europe for many decades).

I was looking forward to some pretty fine dining in Auckland, and we'd taken note of two places that were highly recommended by the in-flight magazine on our way to New Zealand. One of them, Satya, an Indian restaurant, turned out to be literally two doors down from the van rental company's office, so we went there for a big lunch after dropping our van back (the guy there was brilliant - he immediately gave me a refund for getting our first puncture repaired, said no problem about our lost picnic table, and various other bits and pieces - it was great to get to experience a genuine ´no quibbles´customer service). But the restaurant was quite disappointing really, and we were the only customers for lunch.

The second recommended place was a disappointment too - Live Fish on the harbour waterfront. It was an expensive place, although pretty cool in that they select a live fish from their tanks and they present it to you before preparing and cooking it. But the place was pretty grim really (although popularly patronised by local Chinese), as it's a working fish market during the day.

We got a bit of a scare on the morning we were due to fly out of Auckland though, as Sarah noticed that the van had another puncture (making one puncture at the start of the trip, and one at the very end). After a bit of a panic, I rang the rental company to see if they'd pick it up, but they couldn't do that, we'd have to sort it out ourselves. The big problem seemed to be the mad slope of the road that the van was parked on - but with a bit of help from the hostel owner guy (forcing some broken paving stones under the tyres to prevent a roll-back once I'd jacked up the van), I managed to change the wheel. The rental company were good too, in that they didn't require us to have the puncture repaired before dropping the van back, so that meant we weren't in a mad panicky rush to get the van back (they shut for the day at midday, it being low season now).

So after lunch we strolled back to the hostel and waited for our pre-booked taxi. It arrived on time, but then the driver refused to accept the booking voucher I had paid for and received from the New Zealand tourist office (iSite) the day before (he claimed his company didn't deal with the iSite booking system). After a bit of arguing I had to pay him again, otherwise he was going to just leave us there. At the airport I explained the situation at the iSite office there, and they accepted their mistake, and told me they'd refund my credit card (they didn't, but after 3 or 4 e-mails they finally did process my refund!).

Other than those minor annoyances, everything else went swimmingly, and the flight to Santiago in Chile was really smooth. We finally got individual TV screens in the seat in front (the first time on this trip), so after watching a few movies I conked out for a good bit. Originally we had four seats to just the two of us, and we could have probably slept quite well, but then a girl moved into the far seat and so I was all scrunched up. The independent American movie Juno, by the way, was brilliant, I'm looking forward to seeing it again.

So after a very pleasant flight we arrived in Santiago in the late morning.