Kia Ora Kiwi Land

Tuesday, January 25, 2011 Katie and Taylor
Ok, so I'm not going to bore you with our movements of our first week in New Zealand, it involved flat hunting, job hunting and numerous visits to immigration to sort out our visas (which have finally been approved). We would add photos but to be honest the immigration office and medical centre isn't exciting!


The second week was much more exciting, heading from Auckland to Tauranga to visit fellow Odysseyers Barry and Pauline. They have been in the UK for the last 10 years and have travelled back home to start New Zealand life again. Since we were waiting for our work visas we decided to head there for a few days, which ended up being a week, to keep us busy. Tauranga is about 3-4 hours from Auckland so we jumped on the bus after a long week of visa related problems.


Barry and Pauline took us all around their local area including a tunnel and gorge walk at Karangahake which used to be an active gold mine. It was so nice to be outdoors again and the scenery was stunning. New Zealand is very similar to the UK but with the added bonus of hot weather! We also headed to an open cast gold mine which was huge followed by a kiwi orchard. Barry has been working a few days a week in his friends Kiwi orchard so we paid them a visit and got a detailed explanation of the kiwi fruit, really interesting and surprisingly complicated. The day was topped off with a bottle of wine and a few beers watching the sun go down, bliss. Also we visited/spied on Richard O'Briens house as he is now resident here, very stalkerish but interesting none the less. Barry and Pauline kept us busy and healthy with lots of walks. We visited Mount Maunganui a few times, walked round it and up it. It's a stunning area and we even managed to catch an international beach volleyball tournament and some speed boat racing on the harbour. 






We had an amazing time at Barry and Paulines and we even managed to celebrate recieving our visas whilst there with a few glasses of bubbly. We will definitely be back in the future (not only to return Barry's shoes) and hope to see them in Auckland too.


We're now back in Auckland living with some friends and having various trial shifts and interviews which will all be discussed when we have jobs to talk about. And just in case people are worried, Taylor's spider bite from Oz is healed and there's no need to worry.
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