New Zealand, Fiji & Vanuatu '97
Back in July 1997 I flew to the other side of the world to visit New Zealand, this was only the first leg of my voyage as after 5 days I flew to Fiji to meet up with the square rigger 'Soren Larsen' and then to sail aboard her to Vanuatu out in the South Pacific.
New Zealand is a lovely country, I landed about 11am on a Sunday morning (after a gruelling 26 hour flight with only a 3 hour stopover in Kuala Lumpur) in Auckland (the capital city in case you didn't know!) and was met with glorious sunshine. I had spent the last couple of hours of the flight worrying over what the weather would be like as it was the start of winter over there and I only had 4 days to try and see as much as I could, as it turned out I needn't have worried. Once through duty-free and customs I set out to pick up my hire-car and within 3 hours I was out of the city centre and well and truly lost!
The first thing I noticed about driving around Auckland is that all the road signs direct you using road names and not destinations, so out came the tourist map. This was a fag-packet sketch affair so I ditched it, I knew I wanted to go up the west coast and into the Northlands so I just kept the sea on my left and carried on till the houses got less and less! It got to about 4pm (yes it really did take me that long to finally get out of Auckland's grip) and I needed to start looking for a place to sleep so I stopped at this little Tourist Information shop that I found out in the middle of nowhere, inside was a really helpful old lady that phoned around a few guest houses she knew but, being the 'off' season, they were all closed! Then another lady came into the shop, overheard our conversation and she suggested a small Motel down near Muriwai Beach, we phoned them up and low and behold they did have a room. At this point I started asking directions, bad idea, they soon realised that I was very tired having not slept for nearly 36 hours and therefore incredibly stupid! She then suggested that I follow her in my car and she'll show me the way! Nobody in England would even think of making this much effort to help a foreign traveller, these Kiwi's truly are friendly people.
I duly arrive at the Muriwai Beach Motel and I'm met by a bloke from Portsmouth (the owner), I mean how surreal can this get I fly halfway round the world and start meeting Englishmen! The Motel is fantastic with great big double beds and a TV, unfortunately none of the room have central heating as it's mainly a surfers place and not used to having customers in the winter, but he supplied me with two thick blankets so I'll be ok. Before dinner I decide to take a walk down to the beach and stretch my legs, when I got there the sun was just setting and the view was spectacular, what a way to finish my first day in New Zealand.
