This will be a bit of a weird review as it can be partially about Auckland and partially about the passport problems. As most people won't be too interested in the passport problems I will give a summary of Auckland and what we did there even if its intrinsically linked.
Our first port of call was the airport where I was told by the supervisor that he wouldn't let me fly with my green faced passport. He said others might let me, but he wouldn't. Unless I could get a letter from the Australian consulate saying it was ok. Next stop UK consulate. Bear in mind they had just moved the passport making abilities from the Wellington consulate in January so that everyone has to send them to the UK. Dammit. UK consulate said they thought it would be ok to travel but they understood my problems and that I could do an emergency passport to go to Australia if I wanted one. I had to check if they accept them. Off to the Australian consulate. Only some armed guards intercepted us and sent us to a visa place instead. They said that (after 24 hours) that I should be fine to enter but they couldn't write me a letter. Well that was as good as useless. Though the confirmed Australia will accept an emergency passport but I needed 5 working days to link up my working holiday visa. I didn't have that so I had to e-mail Tasmania who never got back to me on time. So I was sweating on if I could get into Oz. I also wanted to post my passport to the Darwin consulate but they didn't exist anymore so I would have to send it to a friend and would now need to go to Perth. To do that we needed a train. The Australian trains said you can't take a train pass without a foreign passport. Eventually they confirmed the emergency passport was fine. Thank God. Ok now I would have to justify not being able to pick up my passport and I needed a countersignatory. I didn't have anyone in Melbourne so Cisco would have to act as my countersignatory and sign the paperwork in Auckland to post it in Melbourne. I was stressed all the way up to the flight but ended up getting to Australia without any problems. Both New Zealand and Australia customs wondered why I got a new one when they can see my face. Ask Virgin Australia. Long story short, it seems you can fly with a partial green face but that its at the airlines discretion and you would be taking a risk. I am in Oz now and have posted the application. One week later and it still hasn't reached Liverpool. Fuck sake. The stress just continues. Still have my passport warning from the UK government as well about losing and damaging too many but this one was not my fault.
So now I had to sort out the emergency passport and this meant we were tied down to Auckland. Nothing was exciting me too much about the rest of New Zealand and Joe kept saying everything was underwhelming so we decided to stay put. Auckland is kind of like a mini Sydney with shitter weather. We kind of just bummed around and enjoyed being in an urban setting. We went to the Easter weekend fair, which was ok and did the coast to coast walk. That's really nice, especially Eden Park which is probably better than One Tree Hill. Its definitely something to do if you are in town. We went to the media centre and watched Once Were Warriors as well. Its a cool place to watch Kiwi films for free. The weather was still toilet. We went to see the Lego Movie, which was weird and funny in parts. That damn song is addictive. The sushi in this city is really good and I like the pick and mix options. We went to some couchsurfing drinks and met an English couple and a German girl called Alex. We hung out with them in cafes and went for drinks while in the city. We also caught up with Joe when he came through and also with Laura (who we had missed in Wanaka and was in town). I don't actually know what we did with 2 weeks there. Not much seemingly. Lastly we caught up with Cisco, who I hadn't seen for ages and he signed the paperwork for us while taking us to a great vegetarian Indian restaurant in the summer. Cannelle also took a driving lesson and realised it was not too bad. More on car problems next time. We have scratched up the car and hoping that they won't notice tomorrow and charge us any damages on the rental car. Yet more stress and given our bad luck recently I don't hold out much hope. We were beginning to figure that some force of fate was trying to prevent us from taking our flight to Oz. This was reinforced when we got to the airport. What are the words you don't want to hear when you are afraid of flying. "There is going to be a 20 minute delay because one of the engineers has found a fault with the plane". What the fuck? A fault with the plane? Even if that is true why would you say it. Lie dammit. I spent the next 4 hours of flying time wondering what the fault was. Maybe it was aerodynamics as we had a lot of turbulence and the landing was downright weird as if it was undercooked and then revving the engine to get over the line. Needless to say we were happy to touch down in Melbourne and the first day would involve a lot of bollocks that we needed to take care of. Onwards to Oz. Its a shame the last 3 weeks in New Zealand had been fairly average because we had really liked the first 5 weeks. Tom was definitely right. The South Island is much better than the North Island. Only really need to see Tongariro and Rotorua in the North.
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