We made it to Auckland without any incident. After the last day in Australia, we needed to recover (see picture above).
This is the view out the side of our hotel. Auckland is a surprisingly modern and classy city, at least in some parts. The channel here is the viaduct. It's the main area in town where hip restaurants and shops are located, but the waterfront is a relatively small area in town. The rest of the city center is a combination of run down, abandoned buildings that compete with new construction that is attempting to revitalize the city.
(Another view of the viaduct. These apartments all have docks so their owners can enter off canals, similar to Venice, Italy.)
Tepid bath? At least they don't get your hopes up. Actually, we found out that there are all kinds of hot springs in New Zealand, and they are described by the water temperature. So some are hot springs and some are tepid.
Above is a picture of the countryside. We originally meant to drive to the South Island to hike the Abel Tasman Coastal Walk, but upon arrival we found out that instead of being a 6 hour drive it was actually 12. So we stopped to ask some advice at a local hiking shop, and decided to drive to the Coromandel Penninsula about 2 hours out of Auckland. The penninsula reminded us a lot of the Island of Skye, because the road is very narrow (one lane in many places), and follows a coastal route.
This is a picture of a "forbidden" road to the trailhead. The rental car companies are very specific in their aggreement, stating that certain listed roads may not be used. Unfortunately, that's also where all the best hiking is. Since Scott had extensive experience driving narrow, unpaved mountain roads (Scott said there is no way this road could be worse than the Gap Road back home), we decided to drive the forbidden road anyway. It turned out that it really was a very normal unpaved road and the drive was completely uneventful, except for a traffic jam caused by a herd of cattle.
There were actually 3 forbidden roads, but we only needed to drive two of them. One was really no different than any other road, and the other was just narrow. I suppose it's like driving in snow; if you're not used to it, you could make some pretty bad mistakes. -Anna
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