Auckland Adventures

Immediatly upon waking up Monday morning at 4am at Cindi's house I started cursing myself for accidently booking the 7am Air New Zealand flight out of Sydney for Auckland. I thought I clicked the 9am flight however after reviewing my booking after I noticed my flight left at 7 AM! Luckly at 4am there is no traffic so I had an easy drive to the airport in my rental car. I spent my time in the airport looking for a new battery and charger for my Casio camera, due to the fact that left the charger with battery in it at the hostel. No luck though and arrived in Auckland with no working camera, not a surprise given my history with cameras and electronic devices.


I arrived in Aucland at 12:30 with a quick breeze through customs and a new 1 year work permit freshly inked in my passport. A quite pregnant faye met me, my backpack, adidas duffle bag, and snowboard bag at arrivals. We quickly loaded up the car and headed to Faye & Naills, and had a coffee and a long chat to catch up. The afternoon brought a trip to the beach with Fayes dog Jade and a dip in the ocean. On Wednesday I started my car hunting. I drove all over auckland checking out cars but couldnt get past this cute little Nissan March I discovered for the discount price of $5990 in the morning. I came across several interesting used car dealers some who wernt even interested in trying to sell me a car, definitely a far cry from the typical US car dealer. One dealer brought me into the office and tried to show me on the computer their ENTIRE stock listings. However the owner of The Clean Green Car Company was extremely nice, very helpful, and the car came with registration, warant of fitness, and a 1 year AA warranty should anything go wrong with the car. At the end of the day I transfered enough money to cover the car into my checking and drove back intending to pay for my car. I filled out the paperwork, had the registration transfered into my name and when trying to pay I found that my debit card wouldnt work in his "EFTPOS" machine. Therefore the only way to pay would be to get a bank check which means I needed to have a bank account.



Having no job, no signed lease, no proof of anything I feared getting a bank account would be a problem. However it ended up being extreemely easy! I went into Westpac with faye the next day and was able to open up an account with no problem, however the only way to really transfer money quickly was to get out my daily limit on cash from my bank of america account from the atm and then deposit it into my Westpac account. Luckly Westpac and Bank of america are sister banks and there is no withdraw fee, or currency exchange fee when withdrawing money from a Westpac machine. (I suggess anyone traveling abroad check into this as Bank of America has many sister banks around the world and the fees can add up when withdrawing at foreign atms, im sure other american banks might have similar set ups with foreign banks). After 4 days of withdrawing the limit and depositing into my account I had saved up enough and was able to get a bank check for my car.



Thursday I met up with Ameilia, another 20 St pauls London flatmate, and stayed with her for a few days. That evening we met up with Anna, also a friend from london and went to Malt, this extremely cool local pub with thursday evening DJ's. It seemed like I was back in DC and hanging out at Saint-ex with a very hipster crowd. We caught up but headed to sleep early as Ameilia and I were headed to Big Day Out on friday which is a MASSIVE music festival.



After a Friday morning champagne brunch we headed to Big Day Out with about 10 people. Ameilia drove and we parked at her dads factory which was right next to the concert venue. He owns a company that makes "Hookie pokey" candy. Its this carmel like candy that is in Hookie pokey ice cream...maybe the most popular flavor in New Zealand. We took a quick walk through the factory then walked towards the Big Day Out gates. Once through we immediately went into the +18 line to get wristbands, however they would not accept my drivers license as proof of ID, even though its valid to drive on, buy a car with, and register said car with. Ameilias friend immediatly chimed up saying I was visiting, was obviously not going to bring a passport to a festival, and was obvioulsy over the 18 drinking age. The woman quickly replied looking at my Washington DC drivers license saying "I dont know what this is and you dont look over 25". Therefore this 28 year old was about to not be able to buy beer even though 10 years over the drinking age, luckly though one of Ameilias friends went throught the line a second time and got a second wristband for me and we dodged the system. The rest of the concert was awesome, The Ting Tings awesome, Pendulum awesome, Lupe Fiasco Awesome, Arctic Monkeys average as usual, and Hot Chip AMAZING as usual.

By sunday I had finally transfered enough money to get a bank check to pay for the rest of my car. Luckly there was a Westpac branch that was open on sundays, we stopped, got the check, picked up my 2001 Nissan March in Lavender! After dropping it off back at ameilias we picked up Anna and Amy and went for a tour around auckland. First stop was Mount Eden which is actually a volcano with an amazing view of auckland, then to Mission Bay for brunch. After a good amount of chit chat I hung out with Ameilia for one last evening, then headed to Fayes on Monday for one last day at the beach with her before my drive down to my new home Wellington.