New Zealand at Last!

So we eventually arrived in Auckland on Tuesday at 4am. We had booked into a hostel Ponsonby for a few days to recover, and assuming we would be stuck in the airport trying to find our luggage for a few hours we booked in for Wednesday, not Tuesday night. Being used to South America where nothing works and everything is highly disorganised we were shocked when we walked through customs and picked up our luggage in under 20 minutes. Unfortunately we had to sit on the porch outside the hostel for a couple of hours until it opened but being hardened by the freezing Peruvian nights we were quite comfortable.

Ponsonby, as we later found out, is the 'Soho' of Auckland and here everything is around 50% more expensive than anywhere else in the country so we had a paniced few days trying to figure out how we were going to survive in the most expensive country in the world. However we found Olive's house quite easily, thanks to a few very helpful locals, and we soon discovered that outside the city centre things are more affordable! Thank Goodness! We spent a few days clothes shopping at charity shops as my trousers were litterally falling off me and Emma has no shoes after foolishly throwing her trainers away one by one!

Olive and Graeme live in  Mangere East, which we were told by the manager of our hostel, Kevin, is the 'rough' part of Aukland. So, armed with our fiercest faces and most confident swaggers we got off the bus.( I must pause to discuss the buses in NZ. I realise we are used to South American buses where it is usual to be sat next to a goat or have bags of cocaine in the boot, bus the buses here seem to be from the future. They have TVs in them which show the local news, and navigation systems which show the passengers a map of the route they are taking. An automated voice tells you which stop we are at and the local facilities for example 'We are at the Sky Tower Stop. Disembark here for fish restaurants, the shopping centre and all changes to Mangere East'. WOW! In Stoke on Trent buses like these would have been stolen, defaced, burned out within a few hours of being comissioned!) Anyway, we got off at our stop in Mangere East and weren't faced with gang warfare but a lovely little park with rugby pitches with a cricket ground. There wasn't a piece of litter anywhere to be seen, no graffiti, bus stops weren't vadalised. People stopped in the street to welcome us to the village- teenagers, teenage girls spoke to us. Have you ever seen the 'Truman Show'? It was a bit like that. We're wondering if they put some kind of happy drug in the water here, becasue it's starting to rub off on us. I can't find anything to moan about which delights Emma but is worryingly unlike me.

So we're staying with Olive for 2 weeks, helping to do some building work on their massive house which has been a bit neglected over recent years due to Olive's bad health. She'ds getting better though, thank Goodness. It's very much like being at home with Hev and Pee. Today Olive gave me stewed Rhubarb for my cereal and complained that I hadn't cleaned the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. The house is rulled by Carmen the cat (not Holly the dog but close) who gets fed twice a day with cat food warmed for 21 seconds in the microwave! Graeme makes Monty Pythons jokes which I don't understand but laugh anyway. Stephan, a 20 year old German volunteer, lives in the poolhouse and gets up late! He's a bit poorly though so we'll forgive him!

We work 8 hour days to build up our hours to have days off to explore the North Island. We're considering buying a van which can double as accomodation to save us some money and let us explore the Island properly, but as neither of of knows anything about cars, we need to find a man to help us! We'll post some photos soon,

Roo and Emma
xxxx