After a hiccup with drivers licenses prevented us from hiring a car, we were forced to abandon plans to explore New Zealand’s Central Otago region by road, and instead extend our visit to Auckland from 4 to 9 days.
Known as the City of Sails, Auckland is another city – like Sydney – where the harbour is very much the focal point, with ferries playing a prominent role in the public transport system. Though surely not strictly true, it is said there are more boats in Auckland than there are people!
With most of the buildings on the central waterfront being modern hotels, bars and restaurants, as well as offices, perhaps Auckland’s most famous historic building – The Ferry Building – really attracts the eye. This was Auckland’s original ferry terminal, and stands – now purely in a ceremonial capacity – just behind the modern passenger ferry terminal.
Most of the land around The Ferry Building (indeed, any land in this part of the city that is flat!) was reclaimed from the sea, beginning right back at the formation of Auckland in the 1840s. At that time, Queen Street – nowadays Auckland’s most prominent and most prestigious shopping street – was an open sewer, and this part of town was – rather like The Rocks in Sydney – home to many of the city’s most undesirable characters!
A local bartender who we got chatting to estimated the number of bars, cafés and restaurants in downtown Auckland to be 500. That might be nothing compared to the 3,500 found in Melbourne, but it’s a massive change from the Auckland that we remember from our visit 10 years ago. When we walked down Queen Street during that visit, on a sunny weekday afternoon, it was dead. Nowadays, Queen Street is buzzing whatever time of day or night you might happen to be visiting.
Just off the northern end of Queen Street – nearest to the waterfront – is Auckland’s Central Station, Britomart. Ten years ago, the station was surrounded by disused docklands; now there are pavement cafes, hotels, and the very hipster Takutai Square where giant bean bags are laid out each morning (weather permitting) to provide stressed-out shoppers and city workers with a moment of zen…
Another nice spot for relaxing in Auckland is Albert Park. It’s nothing like as big as Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens, but it does have some very big trees!
And while we’re on the subject of trees, it can be quite hard to say where the roots end and the branches begin with some of the crazy trees you find in this part of the world!
Today, whilst 10% of New Zealand’s population is made up of South East Asians (from China, India, Korea, and to a lesser extent Indonesia, Japan and Taiwan), a whopping 20% of Aucklanders fall into this ethnic category. Our apartment is in the city’s University district, and if we had wanted to, I think we could walk to a different Asian restaurant every day for three months, many of them catering to modest student budgets.
A visit to Auckland would not be complete without at least one picture of the Sky Tower. Standing at 320m – a few metres taller than the Eiffel Tower – Auckland’s Sky Tower is visible from just about everywhere in the city. As well as taking a lift up to the observation deck (which we did 10 years ago, so will not be doing again during this visit), you can dine at the top, or jump off it! We have seen several people complete the SkyJump, which involves falling at nearly 90mph while attached to a wire that slows you down just a few metres before you hit the ground.
Sky Tower is the most recognisable building in a skyline that is particularly photogenic from the water. We spent one of our evenings in Auckland on a 2.5 hour dinner cruise around the harbour. As well as getting some great views back across the city, we sailed beneath the Auckland Harbour Bridge. This road bridge is famous for having four additional lanes (two in each direction) added several decades after its original construction. The extension was designed by a Japanese engineer, and hence became known locally as the Nippon Clip On!
Whilst putting together a skeleton plan for our three months of travel back in September, the brief visit we had planned to make to Auckland was really just a means to an end. From our experience ten years ago, we didn’t think the city would warrant much of a visit, yet, we did need to pass through Auckland as it has the only airport (accessible to us) from which we could fly to Polynesia,
But… how wrong were we?! It is a shame not to have been able to complete our south island adventures as planned, but this story has a happy ending, because there are now a tonne of things to see and do here in Auckland. As well as all the big-city buzz we had expected to find 10 years ago, there are several great suburbs to visit, as well as all the islands around the Hauraki Gulf that are accessible as day trips from the city’s harbour.
It’s proving to be a busy nine days, and I am sure this won’t be our last visit to Auckland.
I’m sure that Ewan and Lorna would love to climb those trees . I would NOT like to jump from the top of the Sky Building !!!