Fully rested, or so we thought, we arrived from tropical Fiji into… Rainy Auckland. What? Rain? It was supposed to be summertime in New Zealand, no? Soon it would prove indeed to be. Our travel continued from the unexplored capital, along the lakeshore towns of Rotorua and Taupo, over Tongariro’s majestic volcanos towards the Cook Strait, where a ferry would – well yeah – ferry us to the southern island.
After waking up early and catching a small breakfast at Nadi’s international airport, we boarded our on-time four-hour flight towards New Zealand’s capital. This Airbus A330 was luckily a bit younger than its cousin which flew us from Singapore to Fiji, so while our cell phones charged, Véro enjoyed both mine and her in-flight breakfast. Which was, according to her, surprisingly delicious. In the meantime, she was stressing a bit for the upcoming customs inspection in New Zealand, since they tend to be as strict as their Australian counterparts featured in numerous infotainment television programs in Belgium. Upon arrival in Auckland, we decided to go through the manned immigration, rather than taking the automated kiosks, for the obvious passport stamps. We had to wait quite a while for our luggage, and since we had camping equipment, we also had to go through the quarantine inspection, which took us quite some time to complete. Our boots were declared clean quickly (I had them cleaned the evening before in Fiji), but our tent had to be fumigated. If ever visiting New Zealand, you have been warned. After we collected (and packed) our tent again, we also collected our rental car from the Hertz office (booked through the reliable Sunny Cars website though), picked up a sim card from Vodafone and drove off on the wrong side of the road towards Auckland. Pretty much also the only time we’ll be driving northbound this whole road trip. We also picked up our first batch of groceries from Pak’n’Save (comparable to Colruyt in Belgium). We had booked one night in a basic hotel in Auckland, thinking we might still explore the city a bit, but we were too tired. We boiled some water, had an instant soup with some crackers and bread, and went to bed early. Visiting Auckland will have to wait till our last day in a month or so.