For about 3 weeks the city of Auckland will be our 'home' base.
From there we plan to travel to a few of the islands in the Pacific. (see pacific travel report for more details)
Wednesday morning the 20th of September we took the bus from Mendoza to Santiago de Chile. This bus also passed our skiing resort which we had left just 2 days before. Unfortunately you cannot get on a bus to Chile from there, since it simply will not stop!
After passing the border we also saw several other skiing areas which were much bigger than the one we stayed in. After the snow covered mountains we arrived in the spring in Chile. We hadn't seen it like this before. The mountains now covered with grass, the trees in bloom and flowers everywhere. We almost felt like being in the Alps. This area is also packed with vineyards as far as the eye can see.
After 7 hours we arrived in Santiago - the central bus terminal, from where we took another bus to the airport. We now had to wait 7 long, boring hours before our flight to Auckland would leave.
Our flight left Wednesday evening at 22.45 hrs and we arrived in Auckland Friday the 22nd of September at 04.00 in the morning. You may wonder what happened to Thursday the 21st? (by the way happy birthday dad) Crossing the International Date/Time line really messes up your week!
After arriving we immediately started calling hotels and hostels. We weren't very lucky at first since they were either fully booked, too expensive or didn't answer the phone because of the early hour. We then decided to wait till 8 o'clock to try again.
We finally asked the tourist information desk to make some calls for us. They found us a hostel near the centre of town.
We booked the hostel and bought the bus-tickets to the city. By the way the prices we had heard so far weren't making us very happy! Having spent almost 6 months in Central and South America we were not used to these (almost) European prices.
When we arrived at the hostel it appeared that they had made a mistake. The room we had booked (incl. private facilities) did not exist. The owners of the place (Asians whose English was worse than our Spanish!) had not understood the word 'ensuite'. They did offer us the room half-price, but after having spent half an hour arguing about whose fault it had been and who should return the money, we decided to leave. We did get our money back via the Tourist Information centre. With our travelling experience so far, we hadn't expect having to deal with such a situation, especially not in New-Zealand. Leaving this place we were even more tired than before and also extremely p-off.
We walked in the direction of the centre and managed to find another one reasonably fast (and almost within budget!).
The following days we spent trying to find flights and accommodations on the pacific islands, which was actually more time consuming than expected. Just our luck, we arrived in Auckland during spring-break!!! As a consequence, flights are fully booked and prices are sky high (at least double).
Monday the 25th of September we went to the Auckland Atradius office to pick up our parcel containing our fins, which we had sent almost 8 months ago. We then went to the internet cafe again to finally book some flights. In the coming weeks we will visit Tonga and the Cook Islands. We decided to skip Fiji due to the holiday season and the current prices. Maybe we will visit Fiji from Aussie.
Tuesday we spent, besides walking through Auckland, in the internet cafe to book an accommodation on Tongatapu, the main island of Tonga. We found a nice bungalow right at the beach, some 20 minutes outside of Nuku'alofa (home of the royal family). We only booked for 3 nights since after Tongatapu, we wanted to switch islands.
Wednesday we visited the Auckland sky tower. At 328 metres Sky Tower is the tallest tower in the Southern Hemisphere. At the top we had an awesome view on the city, the harbour bridge and the islands in the bay.
Thursday the 28th of September we flew from Auckland to Tongatapu with Pacific Blue.
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