Travel Journal: New Zealand Pt. 1

Hey folks!

Hope you’re all keeping well during these strange times and doing things that make you feel good despite the situation. Whether that’s finding a new series, learning the trombone, making the best banana bread of your entire life, or maybe becoming a skinny legend or TikTok famous. No matter how big or small the accomplishment, staying productive and being supportive of those who need it most is what I believe will keep everyone feeling alright, alright, alright.

So in light of everything that is going on in the world right now, I thought I’d talk about what I got up to before my travelling was put on pause and I headed back to the UK, which was a crazy, profanity-filled mission in itself, but i’ll get to that later…

And I oop – cliff hanger.

But i’ll cover it all, the good, the bad and the ugly. So go get that perfectly baked banana bread, and make yourself comfortable.

NEW ZEALAND – PART ONE

New Zealand is really far away from the UK, and I know that sounds like I’m stating the obvious, but BOY OH BOY. We left at around 1pm on the 8th of February, and arrived at 6am the following day. My head no longer felt attached to my body. Me and Elle literally floated through customs and into our hostel in central Auckland that we’d paid for that day. We were so delirious that we didn’t even process the man telling us that our room had no windows. However, when we headed down the corridor to room 101, nothing could prepare us for what we were about to witness. Basically, what the man might as well have said was that we’d be staying in a prison cell for the night, minus the barred windows, because that’d be the upgraded room for $20 more.

Surf ‘N’ Snow Backpackers was practically a squatters settlement. All we could do was laugh at how terrible it was. The only two good things about it were  a) it was slap-bang in the middle of Auckland and b) it encouraged you to spend as little time in the hostel as possible.

I’m not quite sure how they even landed a 2/5 star rating (which we unfortunately didn’t check), but its reviews pretty much sum it up; “A literal rats nest”, “bed bug infestation” and, my personal favourite “A special kind of hell”. We also had the pleasure of meeting an old man in the ‘lounge area’ watching a static TV whilst picking his feet… I mean, are you freakin’ kidding me?! WHY THOUGH?!

We sped past him after collecting our bags from reception and drop them in our room for the night… and here she is, our appropriately nicknamed jail cell Zoey 101. It too left us with unanswered questions and a strong feeling of disappointment, just as the shows abrupt ending did:

I also apologise for the terrible quality of the images, but I really think it highlights how much of a disaster this place was. I was also in a rush to get the F out of there.

So as we walked in, we soon walked out again.

It was super hot and sunny outside too which helped, and after a few strong Caffè Americano’s from Sierra (alt. option: Scarecrow – also does a strong brew), we felt somewhat revived, sitting in the park eating sandwiches and playing cards. We only had the one day in Auckland before having to catch the iconic and classic ‘gap yah’ choice, the “Kiwi Experience” bus the following day at 8am, so we did a bit of a whistle stop tour. Truthfully, you can do Auckland in a day, unless you want to do the day trip to Waiheke Island for some wine tasting, which i’ve heard is amazing if you can slot it into your budget!

But in the city centre itself, you can get around everything in a day if you want to. We walked through Albert park and down to Takutai Square, which is a cool, boujee outdoor shopping area with lots of places to eat! We then wandered down to the Harbour and had a few reasonably priced beers at Dr Rudi’s Rooftop Brewing Co. with shnaaccks & rather nice view.

After enjoying some sun, alcohol and fresh air, we headed back to the hostel to brave a quick kip, sprinting down the corridor past old creepy guy. It wasn’t particularly successful, as the beds felt like haystacks and the bedding was so gross that we opted to nap wrapped up in our towels. However, we did get a little bit of sleep in before we went out for dinner at a spot called Sushi Factory. This was a great find – super reasonable and tasty food, and its also just off of High Street and by Chancery Square, which is a great place to go and sit (the rainbow steps photographed), and is close to lots of independent and vintage clothing shops, if that’s ya vibe.

We got back to the hostel at 8:30pm (wild night, I know), passing on Auckland’s nightlife to get our jet-lagged selves to bed.

Fortunately me and Elle never got to meet the hostels infamous bed bugs.

The next morning we woke up at 5:30am, packed, checked out, and headed to the very authentic and local coffee shop, Starbucks. 2 Venti iced coffees later and we were at our designated bus stop. After weaving past all of the 17/18 year olds and the dreadlocked, woke Bens of the group (Google ‘Ben’ from The Inbetweeners 2, and you’ll understand), we quickly found a great crowd and got chatting about our interesting first night and everyone else’s take on Auckland. Our hippie, dippy driver Harry then packed us onto the bus and headed for our first stop, Cathedral Cove.

Oh, and before I continue, just a quick observation that many of us agreed on… the bus drivers we had in New Zealand drove like they’d stolen the vehicle, like, grand theft auto style zoomin’. You were basically on a oneway rollercoaster through the islands. But weirdly enough, we still didn’t get anywhere fast, as we had about 1000 toilet and snack stops, which worked well for my tiny, microscopic bladder, but it was still a wee bit excessive, if you’ll pardon the pun. But anyway, back to Cathedral Cove.

JUST LOOK AT IT:

No wonder it’s been featured in movies like The Chronicles of Narnia. It was the most surreal and picturesque beach i’ve ever been to, it just sort of popped out of nowhere.

A slice of paradise, and the first wow moment of New Zealand. It was one of the spots where I started to realise why so many people fall in love with the country.

We spent a few hours here swimming and chilling with a couple of girls we met (shoutout to Hannah and Ellis) and just gossiped and chatted about what we’d been up to before going travelling. We also met 2 guys, Hugo and Eneas, pronounced ‘IN-EE-US’, not ‘IN-EE-ASS’. I explain this simply because we couldn’t help but notice a slight mispronunciation of his name could sound a bit like a rude phrase…

BUT ANYWAY.

We walked back to the bus and grabbed a FruJu ice block along the way, which was 10/10; get the grapefruit & lemon over the pineapple flavour though, you’ll thank me later.

NEXT STOP: Hot Water Beach. This place was super chilled. Not loads to do around the area, but lots of nice walks and beaches with its fair share of nice weather.

After we made some dinner, we headed down to Hotwater Springs and looked for the crowd of people sitting in pits in the sand, which didn’t take long. Sounds very weird I know, but the reason behind this is because the beach is famous for, you guessed it, its hot springs. So, what felt like an hour of digging out our hot-tub style hole in the sand, we finally had something that looked a bit more impressive than a big puddle. But you know what, it worked – we hit some hot-ish water… go figure.

It was like a lukewarm bath.

After heading back and showering, we walked down to the local bar in search of beer, but tonight wasn’t our night, as it had closed early, boo hiss boo! So, instead, we hit up the beach again, which actually turned out to be better than a beer, as we caught some whales having a splash around, which was so so cool. We also saw Elon Musk’s ‘SpaceX’ satellites, which majorly freaked us out at first; lots of ‘the world is about to end’ guesses at what they were before we googled it.

They do look a bit strange though, check them out here.

But there you have it, my first few days of travelling, and the end of part 1. Eventful, but fun!

Sadly we didn’t end up staying on the same bus as the girls for the whole trip, which was such a shame, but we did see each other at various stops along the way for a few cocktails and a catch up, which was one of the pros about the Kiwi Bus. You always cross  over with lots of people you meet earlier on. It’s like one big constant reunion.

However, we did end up sticking with the boys for whole way – lucky them! They just couldn’t shake us – and if you’re reading this Hugo and Eneas, firstly, well done, but also, thanks in advance for putting up with such a ridiculous and outrageous pair of girls… we know you love us really.

xoxo

The Atomic Blonde