Day 24 – 26; Auckland: “Come with me please, sir.”By Lee

The plane journey from Fiji to Auckland has not gone according to plan. My plan that is. In my ideal world people are swift (people who drive under the speed limit are not permitted in my world), considerate (if someone is waiting for me to finish choosing a muffin, I will let them go ahead of me while I deliberate and then go back to the queue when I’m ready) and control their children. The last point is going to set a lot of eyes rolling. Yes, I don’t have children so, no – I don’t know how difficult it is to keep a leash on the blighters.

But you know what I do know? Controlling them in a confined space where movement is restricted, urination requires queuing for the privilege and, depending on the gung-ho attitude of the guy up front piloting the bastard, will be up and down willy-nilly, is impossible.

I know kids are erratic, moody and exceptionally irascible when all of the above factors are forced upon them. Just like you, I was a kid once and I know how much of a little shit I was at times. The question I have, however, is where is the logic putting these fountains of annoyance in a plane?

New law: if you have just had children, you have therefore forfeited the right to go on any long distance vacations that requires the transportation of these screaming, shitting and irrational scourges for the safety and sanity of your fellow travelling man. When they turn eight you’re allowed leave the country again.

Beside us, two children spend the entire journey yelling, punching and successfully convincing me to get an impulsive vasectomy. And I love kids. My sister is having another baby in the next 24 hours as I write this and I’m gutted that I’ll miss the first few weeks of his or her new life. These kids on the plane? I want to stuff them out the airlock.To add insult to injury, another (though admittedly quieter) young girl walks up and down the gangway for most of the flight while staring at people looking lost and misplaced. Is it possible to abandon a child on a plane? It appears someone on their way to Auckland has just given this challenge a shot.

I do some staring of my own right back at the louder of the kids without consciously realising I’m doing it. As my eyes burrow into the skull of the yelling tot, Sheila informs me I’m glaring at it. And not in a good way. “What are you trying to do? Freak it out more?” she asks. Such is my desperation, I quickly realise that I’m trying to literally scare it into submission. I’m actually trying to frighten a child into shutting up with my eyes. A brief flash of shame jolts me back to reality and I retort to turning Muse up even louder on my iPod. Muse are a loud band. Just not loud enough it seems.

We touchdown in Kiwiland and I immediately notice something peculiar about what will be my new home for the next three weeks. Auckland airport security are absolutely frantic about the insidious threat of any foreign food-stuffs entering their beloved country. Seriously. While other port agents will scan and sniff everything on you for bomb residue (while delving into any past shady trips you’ve made to countries made up of a lot of sand and enmity towards the west), New Zealand reserves this paranoia for those of us that have been on a farm or might be sneaking some Pringles into the country.

We’re shamed into disposing any food products we have by the constant appearance of food bins and signs informing us of our “Last chance to dump any horrid confectionary hell-bent on destroying our idyllic country.” The propaganda seems to work as Sheila who, in a rare fit of over-reaction, gets a little jumpy about the Hawaiian fudge we have snuck away in our back-pack. We contemplate risking it; after all – it’s fudge in a contained box for Christ’s sake. How many years can you get for fudge-smuggling? – until we spot the beagles. Barely controlled by equally eager importation officers, Snoopy and friends begin their ever-vigilant hunt through the aliens’ suspicious baggage now spilling off the luggage conveyor belts. In a wonderful display of karma, the bags belonging to the parents of the wailing children are not sitting well with ole Snoop and, after some intense scratching and yelping at the offending items, they’re forced to pull everything apart while the dog is rewarded with some meaty treats. I secretly pray for one of the kids to start up again causing the dog to just pounce on it. Of course, it’s just my twisted sleep-deprived humour spiralling out of control again.

It’s not just kid-smugglers who are experiencing the wrath of the ever-vigilant Auckland security personal, however. What appears to be a strange pony-tailed Mongol gentleman (myself and Sheila continue to debate just where on earth this guy originated from) receives some equally stern and cagey stares from an edgy immigration officer. The official appears to be doing that mistrustful nodding action of staring into the new arrival’s face and then down into the passport photo. Squinting and then ultimately pursing his lips together, it can only mean one thing. “Please come this way,” he says before appending the obligatory “”Sir.” And I thought my entry to New Zealand wasn’t going well.

FudgeGate is resolved by asking about three different officials if it’s ok to bring fudge related products into the country – a question I’m pretty sure I would never have imagined asking before this trip started. We’re told yes but – ironically – our bags set off some sort of organic security klaxon when passing through a giant bio-scanning device. My stuff is through so it can’t be mine. But is it? All our bags look the same and my smaller day-bag gets flagged as potentially being the culprit of wiping out the kiwi bird (Quick side-note: of all the birds to pick as a national emblem. Have you ever seen the kiwi? Fat, armless, can’t fly. And in what is undoubtedly the most macho country I have ever been in. You pick a kiwi! Really?) so I have to bring it back for inspection.

“It’s nothing but electronics!” she states, her voice laced with more than a hint of disbelief that someone needs so many gadgets to travel around her fair land. Later on we posit that it was likely the bloody bag of Hawaiian coffee I forgot was in my larger bag that probably set off the alarm bells. It does beg the question though: with all this state of the art technology, sniffer dogs and bio-analysis machinery. And you ask me to open the wrong bag? Smart.

I don’t need to look across the arrival terminal and spot the gray skies outside to realise that the climate in New Zealand is somewhat different to the balmy temperatures we’ve just left. I duck into the toilets and change into jeans and head out in search of transport.

The Auckland evening is surprisingly reminiscent of home. There’s a chill in the air and the cloud cover smacks of Ireland’s near-constant weather pattern – overcast, with the chance of more gray. We manage to get into Auckland city centre and locate our hostel which – it just so freakishly happens – is literally on a corner and facing Starbucks. I decide the omens are good.

By the time we’ve settled in to the place with its multi-coloured doors and posters warning about some rampant backpacker thief, the day is mostly spent. We decide to ramble down into the bowels of Auckland to get something to eat where I’m taken aback by just how amazingly hilly New Zealand’s northern most city is.

Auckland is a quite a large metropolitan area, seemingly built on a shattered archipelago where the top part of the north island bends into a narrow knife-like jetty into the Pacific ocean back toward Japan. Its streets are cosmopolitan and busy; something we realise later is atypical to the rest of the country (more on that later) and it’s clean and friendly. Skyscrapers surface at bizarre angles from the tilted ground and into the night-sky with Auckland’s very own version of the CN Tower (the fittingly named Sky Tower) sitting proud as punch right in the middle of all the action.

We do that perpetual “walk the streets and then go back to one of the first restaurants you looked at” trick and settle into an authentic Japanese establishment called Tanuki’s Cave. I’m not familiar with the word tanuki and I look it up later to discover that it means, somewhat surprisingly, “Raccoon.” The decor is authentic – as is the hostess. I greet her and ask for a table for two in Japanese. She’s either greeted by Japanese speaking gaijin every night of the week or is so shocked by my mispronunciation that she’s chosen to ignore my gutting of her native tongue. It’s only after she drops the menus, apologises, and I then tell her it’s quite alright to absolute no reaction whatsoever, I fear she might not be Japanese at all. Then I hear her ask a table next to us of fellow Nipponese folk if they’d like more water and I resign myself to the fact that I’m probably better off sticking with English.

The meal is exquisite; one of the best we’ve had on our travels. Writing this near the end of our New Zealand leg, I can honestly say it was unsurpassed. The crowd is a mix of east and west, always a good sign seeing natives of the cuisine you’re sampling enjoying the restaurant in question. There’s also a few couples consisting of one half Japanese and the other a “round-eye”. It’s a theme we come across through-out our trip in New Zealand as the close proximity to Asia has resulted in an influx of Pacific Rim peoples coming to New Zealand and, invariably, hooking up with the locals. Well, the Maori are the first locals, but you get the idea.

We spend our time in Auckland pretty much getting out of it which is no reflection of the city’s virtues in any way. On our first day we take an hour long bus trip north to Long Bay, a beautiful parkland area perched at the edge of suburbia on the east cost of the north island peninsula. Its location is wonderful and some of the locals can pretty much walk out their front door and be in the ground’s boundaries within seconds. The park fades away to a long and narrow beach where women jog and dogs chase birds (or each other). We walk the length of it, climb over rock formations like inquisitive kids and then spin around and walk back the way we came.

The weather is good but a little nippy, a nice change from the incessant heat of Hawaii. We stop off and have lunch overlooking the bay and get a better feel for New Zealand prices. In a nutshell, everything is nearly double the amount we’re used to which, with a favourable currency exchange of two-to-one, results in most things being less than what we would normally pay. The following day, in a sudden fit of spontaneity, we rent a car for $15 (€7) for the day and head out west. For that price it’s no surprise that the car is an absolute humongous piece of shit. It’s a Nissan Pulsar, a fitting name considering there are enough miles on the clock to suggest a round trip to the sun. The gearbox handles like a Thai Madam– toothless, old and mistreated – with a ride that is notably bumpy. Amazingly, however, the brakes appear brand new with the slightest of touches practically gluing the unwary driver to the asphalt.

About this time the atmosphere shifts and we experience our first spell of bad New Zealand weather. We drive westwards and visit Karekare, the black sand beach where The Piano was filmed (no gap-toothed Fang-bangers in sight), and climb up into an open cavern on the face of one of the beachside mountains to gain a better vantage point. Here we watch the wind whip in off the dunes and become trapped in the cove’s arms, gusts ebbing and flowing, a layer of surface sand sifting spontaneously, rising and falling above the damp flats like a coppery veil. The waves of green and brown dust rush over the land and change direction on a whim, always hugging the land, sometimes snaking toward the shoreline as if to challenge the watery expanse.

I’m enthralled at how the movement is uncannily ghostly and in perfect synchronicity with the whining sound of air reverberating around the circular beach. At times the current turns in on itself and grows into micro-whirlwinds of silt and gusto, spiralling up into the air before the wind capriciously shifts again causing the sand-funnel to collapse back to the ebony surface. I watch for awhile before climbing back down to the sand and walk in the wind and the sand. From this level the movements are more like the manoeuvres of phalanxes; cloud-like vanguards rushing over territory to strike at anything in their path. We take photos of the sand blasting into each other and, with our eyes stinging and the black sand sucking our feet downward, we decide to leave the turmoil of Karekare and head back to the city.

Auckland is a nice place – what we saw of it. As we journey on we come across some strong anti-northern sentiments among other New Zealanders toward the town which is probably just the usual north versus south ribbing all countries profess. The invective attitude reserved for Aucklanders throughout the rest of the country is exceptionally vehement, however.

Aucklanders are viewed as somewhat uppity, egotistical and acutely urbane; especially in comparison to the more rugged and laid-back persona the majority of the rest of New Zealand espouses. Soft in other words, in a country that prides itself on being anything but. You can’t help but feel, however, that the city folk really don’t care what the rest of the world, and the rest of New Zealand included, thinks of them. They’ve a nice town with some wonderful locales to enjoy. Who cares what some hick from Rotorua thinks?

Tags: auckland, black beach, tanuki