Happy New Year!!

First of all happy New Year to everyone around the world. We hope 2013 brings everything you hope and more.

Taken from Mount Victoria looking over to Rangitoto Island

A few days before new years we headed off to the west coast again this time to Piha beach. Like Bethells Beach its a black sand beach, although this is a little more developed, well a little. It was also much busier as the weather was fantastic. We walked along the whole beach, climbed Te Piha rock and explored the rock pools (Lloyd got caught by an unexpected wave).

A Maori ancestress - Te Piha

Piha Beach

Caught out by a wave - brilliant

Hiding in the bushes

Amazing black sand

On New Years Eve we took the ferry to Rangitoto island. You can see this volcanic island from most parts of Devonport. Its the newest island in Auckland being only 600 years old although it feels like its much older, almost something out of Jurassic park. There are loads of walks on the island, the main one taking about an hour up to the summit. From there you get amazing views of the Hauraki Gulf and Auckland harbour. We had a great day exploring with great weather.

We live here-ish

Entering a lava cave

Getting in the New Year spirit early

For the evening we decided to take a few drinks up to Mount Victoria as it has an amazing view over the city, a perfect spot to enjoy the fireworks. We headed up early to get the sunset (we had to run as we were a little late). Shortly after the sun went down we realised it would get quite cold in the wind. So we had to go home and pick up warmer clothes. This worked out well as we could grab more drinks for Lloyd and chocolate for Janine. By the time we got back there was still an hour and half 'till midnight but there were many people around and lots of fireworks to watch around the city. Lloyd somehow managed to not bring enough clothes again, so for once he was the cold one as Janine sat in her massive snowboarding hoody. At midnight there was a massive firework display from the top of the Sky Tower and around the city. It was pretty cool to see in the new year in the first major city in the world to get it.

Auckland at sunset

Rangitoto behind the silly people

Not sure who ruins the photo

Cheers

Happy New Year

Merry Christmas and all that..

Merry Christmas to everyone! We have had a good week or so since our last post. Last week the weather was pretty hot. We got caught out with the lack of o-zone layer and spent the weekend nursing sunburn. Typically for us Brits the weather has taken a turn for the worst and the festive week is predicted to be rain filled.

Most of the time we have been getting to know the area around Devonport. There is a really cool old school theatre/cinema where we went to see the Ben Affleck film Argo. A true story about the CIA rescure of hostages from Iran in 1979. Its one of the best films of the year and we would recommend seeing it if you can.

Chirstmas eve we treated ourselves to a Tadros Court classic. The baked Camembert was just as amazing as back home. We had a great Christmas day, Janines uni friend Penny invited us to her house in Mount Eden.   Penny and her friend Stef did a cracking dinner, with all the trimmings. It was cool to meet all Pennys friends and share a few (lot of) drinks. Once we got home we Skyped everyone back home, it was great to speak to all the family and friends.

After the festive hangovers were passed we headed out to the west coast of Auckland. The first stop was Bethells Beach, its a huge beach but its most famous for its black sand. The weather wasn't great but it was still cool to wander round. As the rain closed in we went to some water falls called Fairy Falls. Its a 40 minute walk to the falls but worth it as they are pretty spectacular, especially with all the rain we have had. The walk back was shattering as there were hundreds of steps to climb back up. Despite the rain we were boiling when we reached the top and pitied the people walking the other as they had no idea the climb was so steep.

Expats Xmas

Penny and Janine

Chefs Stef and Penny

Bethells Beach

Bethells Beach again

Bethells one more time!

She didn't want wet feet - Fairy Falls

If only I knew that walk up would be so hard

Cheltenham Beach

Sunset in Ngataringa Bay (at the end of the road)

The Kiwi Christmas Tree - Pohutukawa

An Unexpected Journey, but actually totally expected

Wednesday evening we moved into our new place in Devonport, we are sharing a house with Cameron and Rebecca who own the place. It's really nice and comfortable with amazing views, but its still easy to get into the city for work etc.  

On Thursday we met up with Sean, a friend from home. He had been in Thailand for 5 months and is now planning to stay in NZ for a while to work. We watch the Hobbit in 3D and in the high frame rate that everyone has been complaining about. Turns out its not as bad as people make out, some of the landscape and action sequences are incredible. Other times it seems a little odd but its not as jarring as many would have you believe. The film as actually pretty good, they took some liberties with the story and have bulked it out so it will be 3 films, but all in its an enjoyable experience.

In the evening we went to the Vector Arena to watch the local basketball team the Skycity Breakers play against the Cairns Taipans. Its not the NBA but is still a pretty decent standard and fun to watch all the entertainment that comes alongside the game, cheerleaders, mascots dance crews, that sort of thing.

Saturday was the 'famous' Devonstock festival. I say famous, Rebecca and Cam had never heard of it and it was only a couple of hundred people! Local bands played in the park, mostly teenagers just starting out but there were a couple of artists who had released stuff and were more used to performing. We chilled out in the sun listening to the music sinking a few beers and ciders. It was nice to enjoy some live music and it was all actually pretty good, a nice mix of covers and original stuff. We even managed to avoid getting burnt!

GO Breakers GO

Wake up Sean

This is Toby

A little bit of Christmas

Janine, Cameron and Rebecca at Devonstock

Enjoying a cider Janine?

Beautiful sunset last night

Sunshine in December

So its been a week since we last blogged, although it only seems like a day or two ago. Last week we carried on the job and house hunt. Thankfully we now found a place to live and will be out of Hannas hair today. The place is actually just up the road in Devonport and is only a few minutes walk to the beach, perfect as its currently 22 degrees and clear skies. Job hunt is still on the go, its getting a little quiet on the run up to xmas.

Over the weekend Hanna took us to the Matakana markets about an hour north of Auckland. They are famous foodie markets, we could have spent hours (and hundreds of dollars) there. We opted for many free tastings, and only snacked on Vietnamese rice paper rolls. There was also a local country band playing who suited the atmosphere and the weather very well. After we had had enough of the tastings we headed for Orewa and the beach. We took a walk along the beach and around the shops. We found an English food shop that had many treats from back home. Fun as this was the prices for some things were scarily high, a large box of PG tips priced at £2 back home was $16 which is £8. I guess they had travelled a long way but even that much mark up seemed excessive. We stopped for lunch in a cafe then headed back to enjoy the sun.

Sunday we explored the recently regenerated Wynyard Quarter. Renovated for the Rugby World Cup its full of restaurants and bars. There are also many boats moored along the front, some of which are massive ocean yachts for the super rich. These things were seriously massive in size but most impressive was the pristine condition all of them were in, every one was immaculate. After lunch in a cool bar we took a bus to Mount Eden. It's the highest peak in the Auckland area and offers an amazing view of the city since its only 3km out of the centre. It is also an extinct volcano complete with the cone shape crater. We missed the bus back to town but since the weather was nice we walked. Although walking became a funny game of dashing between city blocks and traffic lights as we had decided to try and make a specific ferry time back to Devonport. We must have looked a little silly dashing for the lights then slowing down in order to try and time the next set correctly.

Lloyd pushed to the front for the spicy sample - he regretted it 

Matakana Markets

"He's so attractive!" - Janine

Perfect people watching spot

Janine made a kiwi friend

She's no angel

Wynyard Quarter

Mount Eden

The now obligatory panorama from Lloyd

A week in New Zealand, Houses, Interviews and Tornados

We did arrive safely in Auckland last Tuesday, despite not updating the blog we have been keeping ourselves busy. Currently my cousin Hanna is kindly putting us up and driving us around on a tour of the city and North Shore. We have been looking to get out of her hair as soon as we can so we have been trawling flat share listings and visiting houses. Walking round looking at houses has been a good way to get our bearings, jumping on and off buses and ferries.

Auckland is a cool city, very spread out as Kiwis don't like living in high rises. Its interesting that the population of Auckland is about 1.3 million, about the size of Birmingham.  Its also a quarter of the whole population of New Zealand. Luckily its nicer than Birmingham, and we quickly found a few areas we would like to live in. We were torn between the fashionable area of Parnell, the edgy cool of Ponsonby/Grey Lynn or the chilled out beachy vibe of Devonport. We looked at so many places online and visited a good number too. Some were just not to our liking others were fine but the location wasn't right. We think we have found a place in Devonport, completely different to what we are used too, near a beach.

Both of us have also been searching for jobs, the holiday can't last forever! There is some interest and there is a fair bit around, hopefully we will back to work soon.

We have had some chances to enjoy ourselves. We have climbed a mountain, Mount Victoria, although its only small. I needed smart clothes for interviews so we took a trip up to the Westfields out of town, its pretty similar to the ones back home, but they have awesome food courts. Anyone who has been to NZ or OZ will tell you its the cheapest way to eat out and the food is always better than the takeaways back home. Hanna took us to Takapuna which has some cool bars and restaurants and a nice beach.

This week the weather has turned a little, its been pretty wet all week although its warm. The big news is that a tornado hit a few miles west of us today, sadly it killed 3 people and has done a fair bit of damage. Its not an uncommon thing for them to occur here but unusual for people to be killed.

Beach at Takapuna

Hanna and Lloyd on the beach

Giant Santa on Queen Street - For Aaron and Jake

Janine doing a gnome impression, missing a fishing rod and a pointy hat

Auckland from Mount Victoria