We've made it to Auckland!  Phew!  Time to put our feet up and relax for the last 3 weeks of our holiday.  We spent nearly a week in NZ's largest city, including a weekend in luxury at a posh hotel to celebrate my 29th birthday.  It was nice to have a break from backpacking to enjoy a huge comfy bedroom and meals out every night.  We ate at the Skytower's Orbit restaurant and soaked up some amazing views and our fair share of wine.

One weekend was enough relaxing for us.  The next few days we spent hiking around some of Aucklands suburbs and islands off the coast.  We walked to the summit of Mt Victoria, Devonport, and Rangitoto Island, both extinct volcanoes.  Despite some nasty weather catching up with us, the rain didn't completely spoil the views of the city skyline and harbour.  The scenery on Rangitoto was really interesting as it's the newest of Auckland's 48 volcanoes - lots of pummice, volcanic rock and lava caves.

Auckland's harbour bridge is a dominant part of the harbour scenery.  We decided to walk under and over it on an organised trip.  The bridge climb was deceptively high and pretty nerve wracking in places, but the challenge was a good one and the views from the top were great.  We also saw someone bungy jump from the pod underneath the bridge.  Looked lots of fun but it was less than 1/3 the height of the Nevis jump, so we decided once was enough (for now)...

Canyoning.  What exactly is canyoning?  Well, it involves starting at the top of a canyon and climbing, jumping, scrambling, abseiling, sliding and doing whatever it takes to get down stream to the bottom.  Awesome!  We tried canyoning at the Blue Canyon near Auckland and had an excellent time.  Highlights included:  forward flipping off high jumps into rock pools, sliding backwards head-first down a waterfall and abseiling down bigger waterfalls.  Classic outdoors Kiwi-style fun.  If we have time we will be doing this again!

That's it for this visit to Auckland.  We'll be back for a couple of days in 2 weeks.  Next up - the Bay of Islands to learn to dive and relax on the beach for a fortnight...   Tom & Elle  x

Tags: gym workouts

Post Views: 54