After a relaxing four hour flight from the paradise of Fiji, I finally reached the main destination of my journey. My aunt and uncle were waiting for me at the terminal and it was good to see them after eight years. They live in Auckland and they took me to their cozy place where I stayed for about two weeks.
During these two weeks I spent a lot of time with my family. We discovered Auckland itself and honestly I didn’t like it that much. There is not so much to do but luckily there is so much more to see in New Zealand. Luckily there are some beautiful places located close to Auckland. The green waitekere ranges with her amazing views are a good example for that. On the second day, my aunt and I did a beautiful hike there.
After a couple of days my Aunt told me that she had an early Christmas surprise for me, some days on Waiheke island! The ferry took about 30 minutes and there I took a bus to the hostel where I stayed for four nights. The Waiheke backpackers hostel was located on a hill and the views were amazing. The weather was very good and luckily the beach, where I stayed every day, was pretty close. Furthermore I walked a around the island for a bit and visited some vineyards. The island was really relaxing and I was a lucky man with a Christmas present like this.
When I returned it really was Christmas time, pretty weird during summer if you ask me. We went and celebrated at the farm of another uncle who I never met. It was a really nice night with a lot of food, drinks and games. Now we were together with the whole family and there was much more on the planning for the next couple of days. The next day we drove to Mount Manganui to stay there for three nights. Here we celebrated new year’s eve. Mount Manganui is a popular destination for the Kiwi’s. The beaches are very nice and hiking the mount also is a very good activity.
On the way back we crossed the hobbiton movie set and as a LOTR fan there was no way I would not do the tour. Because of the price, my expectations were pretty high but eventually it was even better than I thought it was going to be. The tour guide was really good and all the fun facts were interesting. It also is bigger then I thought. I also was lucky because recently they fully designed a hobbit hole and we were allowed to go in and see how it really is from the inside. After the tour, which took about 1,5 hours, we had some time to get a tasty ginger beer in the green dragon.
When we arrived back in Auckland I still had two days left to spent with my family. After these very nice two weeks it was time for me to explore the rest of the country. You’ll read about that soon 😉.
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