We stuck together for the first 4 days, it was nice having someone in the same situation. I was not alone. We opened bank accounts, applied for the National Insurance number and bought cellphones. Like that we were ready, we only needed to get a job.
I ended up staying in New Zealand, or Aotearoa in Maori, for a year and it was an amazing time, I loved it. For the first 3 months I lived in Auckland, which is not the capital but it is the biggest city.
One of the things you can do while you are here is visit Mount Eden, less than an hour walk from Auckland Business Centre. This is an inactive volcano with a summit at 196 meters. From here you get an amazing view of the city, I definitely recommend it. Around this mountain you have the Mount Eden Domain, they call Domain to the parks, a massive park where you can go an enjoy a sunny day. I went there with my friends Carlos, a translator from Catamarca, Argentina; and Guillaume, a French guy that lived in Chile for a bit and was living in the same hostel as me.
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| Far away from home |
If you want to go to the beach you have to go visit Mission Bay, only 7 kilometres away from the city. You can take a bus or you can go walking. We use to do that and just enjoy the view off the coast.
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| On the way to Mission Bay |
In New Zealand you can find walks to do almost everywhere, it’s an outdoor country with a lot to see. So with my friend Sol, an accountant from Mar del plata, Argentina, we did the Coast to Coast Walk.It’s a 16km hike across Auckland from one coast to the other, from the Waitemata to the Manukau. We walked pass a lot of amazing landscapes.
We took a bus and we started from Onehunga, the other coast.
After that we arrived to One Tree Hill Domain, the landscape here is unbelievable. It has a 183 meters volcano with 3 craters. Going up there was long but it was definitely worth it.
We then reached Mount Eden, but we didn’t go up the summit because we’ve been there already. Soon after we had the Auckland Domain, but I’ll talk about it a later. We finished in Albert’s Park, located really close to the hostel where we were staying, a great park to chill in the middle of the city.
As you have probably realised by now, New Zealand has a lot of volcanoes. On my first weekend I went with Martín and 2 other guys to Rangitoto Island. We took a ferry and we, once again, started the walk up to the summit. But this one is 260 meters, on a hot day, it wasn’t easy but we made it.
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| View from the summit |
A place that should be in your list is the Auckland Domain, a 75 hectares park, where you can find the Auckland War Memorial Museum. I used t love going to this park, doing the different walks to reach the museum, it’s very nice.
The museum is definitely worth visiting, I’ve been there at least twice. It has a lot of Maori history, from New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. It also has exhibitions of how the old classrooms looked like, how some towns looked like, you can see a lot of animals and they have, of course, a big war section.
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| Lovely kiwi |
There was one thing that called my attention. On one of the section, on the walls they had panels full with names of people that died during the war, to commemorate them. But then I found a blank panel, at the bottom it read “Let these panel never be filled”. Something so simple but so true, such a strong phrase.
As I said before, I lived in Auckland for 3 months. So I had a little family here, some people I keep in contact with, some I don’t anymore but for that time, at the beginning of this trip, they helped me stay strong and not get home sick, I’m always going to be thankful for that.
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| Carlos, Clarisa, Me, Sol and Nacho |
Aotearoa, is a country with a lot to offer. Everything is so green, bright green, it’s amazing. But even though Auckland is the biggest city you can’t feel the stress, it’s not noisy, is chilled. You can find amazing parks all around the city, just to relax and forget about the world. I was definitely right, my dream came true and it wasn’t what I expected, it was much more.
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