On the 4^th of January we finally had to face reality again. After 14 months off work, we were leaving for Auckland to get back to work and find a place to live. Our first week of accommodation was sorted, we were going to house sit for a week for a friend of Julia’s aunt and take care of her cat Mister Ted. Mister Ted is a rather large 14 year old ginger male cat with a just as large personality (Unfortunately he died two weeks ago after a massive stroke which left him partly paralysed). It was a very nice place to stay and get all sorts of things sorted, like job interviews for Julia and house viewings for our own place.

Having looked at a couple noisy shoebox style apartments in the CBD, we decided to cast our net a bit wider and found a nice fully furnished townhouse in Parnell, one of the older suburbs of Auckland, not too far from the city centre. We could move in on the day we were finishing our house sitting, so that was brilliant.

On the 13^th I started work at Genesis Energy, on my first project I was going to be Test Lead for an intranet implementation (MS Sharepoint). The first few days in the office were quite hard and it took a bit of getting used to. I just wasn’t used anymore to being in an office all day. But having never worked with Sharepoint in earnest I had to try to get up to speed as soon as possible so I just got stuck in. Luckily I landed in a nice team of people, which helped. In the meanwhile Julia applied for several jobs and ended up having to choose between a short term contract as Business Analyst or a permanent job as a Software Test Analyst. As she was keen to make the transition to software testing, she went with the permanent job and after a little while on the ‘bench’ she got given an assignment at ASB Bank, which was very interesting as she was getting to test the newest banking products.

Having jobs and a house doesn’t mean we can’t travel anymore of course, we just have to work around our jobs, so in the half year since we have arrived in Auckland we have been on quite a number of trips to explore the surroundings.

Our first trip was to the Coromandel, an area we both love and we know the coastal areas reasonably well, beautiful beaches. So this time we decided to go to an inland area on the peninsula, the abandoned gold mines of Broken Hill. We soon realised that getting out of Auckland at the start of a weekend and getting back at the end of a weekend comes with very heavy traffic, it’s like a Monday morning commute… But we had a good time in the bush. We walked all the trails in the area and never saw someone else on them, despite the DOC campsite being reasonably busy. Maybe it is true and Wellingtonians walk and Aucklanders drive!? There was lots of driving on the campsite, we suspected that people drove from their tents to the long drop toilets… Either way, we enjoyed the walks and a special feature was that we were able to go into a mineshaft and walk 500 meters under the hill. We had brought our head torches for this and warm clothing as it was dark, damp, narrow and cold! But a great experience, the area had a lot of remnants of the old mining times.

Our second weekend trip was supposed to be a beachy weekend at Uretiti, just south of Whangarei, but we had a serious mechanical fault with our tent. A pole snapped and was beyond repair with our emergency sleeve, it just kept snapping. So we packed up, spent an hour on the beach, decided the weather wasn’t that great anyway and decided to do something completely different. “Let’s drive to Dargaville and Tane Mahuta!” Tane Mahuta is the largest and oldest Kauri tree in New Zealand. So we hopped back into the Subaru and drove to Pahi on the Kaipara Harbour where we found a great cottage by change (not fancying staying in Dargaville that much…). The next day Julia got to see Tane Mahuta for the first time, a tree of about 2000 year old! A beach weekend became a true road trip and it was a long drive home, but so worth it, we really loved the west coast, so much quieter than the east coast and covered in ancient lush forest.

A few weeks later, inspired by the west coast scenery we wanted to stay a bit closer to home but have some proper beaches and forest. This is what the Waitakeries offer. An area just outside of Auckland, but not that popular, which is a mystery to us. Having to wait for a replacement pole for our tent (yay for lifetime warranty!) we took the spare tent, which is really just suited for one person, but we’ve made it work before and we can store our stuff in the car while we camp. So off we were, exploring the west of Auckland, narrow windy roads through the forest until we reach the end of the road, where we found a stunning and deserted campground right by a beach with massive waves. We didn’t do much, just explored a bit, walked a tiny section of the Sir Edmund Hillary trail and spent time on the beach watching the fishermen.

Towards the end of summer, feeling that we needed to make the most of the good Auckland weather we wanted to go to the beach town of Hahei on the Coromandel, one of the best beaches around. We picked our days right and had two warm autumn days which we spent on the beach and a stellar night with a take away pizza and a bottle of wine under a Pohutekawa tree. The ocean was treacherous though and several people got in trouble and had to be rescued by surfers as there was no surf life saving anymore so late in the season. It ended up being the perfect weekend getaway. One of these where you go back to the office on Monday and feel like you have been on a holiday instead of just had a weekend.

Auckland it self was taking a bit of time to get used to. We love the weather here, such a difference with Wellington! Pretty much every weekend the weather is warm and sunny and you can go out and do stuff. But during the week it is harder than Wellington, commuting in Auckland isn’t great. It is one of the more congested cities in the world, public transport isn’t great and cycling isn’t possible because Kiwis have a very low tolerance to cyclists on the road. Roads are for cars. I tried to commute to work by walking, then the bus and then the train. It took me an hour to cover the 7 or 8 kilometers. So I did what every Aucklander does and started to drive to work, park in a residential area and then walk the last few minutes, all in all half an hour. Luckily I can avoid the highways and drive away from the centre, so traffic is manageable. Julia however is now working in Albany, which is on the North Shore and she spends 2 to 3 hours a day on commuting and is hating it with a passion. But it is the ASB office where all new development happens and it is the largest customer of her consultancy company, so she has no choice.

So we don’t miss the Wellington weather, but we do miss the ease of getting around and how the city centre is compact. It’s easy to catch up with people during lunch or after work. Auckland is massive, the distance from north to south is 55 kilometers and from east to west it is 40 kilometers! We have found that in Auckland you live for the weekends and don’t do much at night during the week. There is a lot on though, festivals, concerts, events etc, which is the benefit of being in a large city. Auckland has 1.5 million people spread out over 1100 km2. To put this in perspective, Amsterdam has 800.000 people over 200 km2.

Question is, will Auckland work for us in the long run? Do we want to eventually buy a house (very expensive!) here or move somewhere else?! We’ll keep you posted.