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I've spent the past few days at the Amberley B&B in the Auckland suburb of Devonport getting ready for my road trip around New Zealand while the gracious proprietors, Mary and Michael Burnett, have been doing their best to assimilate me into the Kiwi culture. Listening to them talk, I'm even getting used to the Kiwi accent, which is pleasant but hard to describe – it's like an English accent but with long vowels. "Yes" is pronounced "Yiss," "West" is "Weast," and "check" is "cheek."
Devonport is a beautiful historic town on the north side of the bay with a passenger ferry linking it to Auckland, on the south side. After spending a few days in Devonport, I hopped on the ferry and 20 minutes later I was walking around downtown Auckland. I stopped by the Auckland office of my engineering company, Parsons Brinckerhoff, around noon. Being PB's unofficial world ambassador, I gave them a PowerPoint slide show on the Portland office and some scenic places I'd visited during my recent road trip around America. The 20-or-so folks in the office were very kind, some giving me their phone numbers and telling me to call them if I got into any trouble while in New Zealand.
Afterwards I spent a couple hours walking around downtown Auckland, a city of about a million and half people and the largest city in New Zealand. I've visited most major cities in the U.S. and, of those cities, Auckland reminds me the most of Seattle – other than the balmy climate, palm trees, and tattooed Maories, of course. Auckland is a bit smaller than Seattle, but it's hilly, is on a waterfront, and is vibrant with an ethnically-diverse population. My family is from Seattle, with our roots there going back almost a hundred years, so in Auckland I felt right at home.
Above left: The Auckland skyline, with the Sky Tower in the middle. Above right: My first stop in Auckland was at the Parsons Brinckerhoff office. I worked for this same engineering company in their Portland office in the U.S. I spent an hour here giving the staff a slide show about my travels, which they seemed to enjoy.
Above left: A Mexican restaurant in New Zealand! Who would've thought? Above right: Heading up to the Sky Tower, the tallest building in New Zealand. Note the Christmas tree in the background.
Like Seattle, Auckland has an impressive spire that extends high into the sky. Called the Sky Tower, it's something very much like Seattle's iconic Space Needle. The Sky Tower was built as a tourist attraction a few years ago and is currently the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere, and for $8, you can ride an elevator to the top and get a spectacular 360-degree view of the city sprawling beneath. Some of the floor panels on the viewing deck are clear plastic, which made me a bit queasy to walk on since I could see 600 feet straight down to the sidewalk. Several young boys were vigorously jumping up and down on some of the clear floor panels, but I'm not exactly sure what they were trying to accomplish!
I had a great time seeing the Sky Tower and moseying around Auckland, then late in the afternoon I rode the ferry back to Devonport where, back at the Amberley, I continued preparing for my two-month trip around New Zealand. I made a list of all the things I'd need for my trip, including a cooler, folding chair, small folding table, and campstove fuel (called "shellite" over here). With my typical-American attitude, I figured that I'd just drop by the nearest Target-like store to pick up everything I needed.
After talking about this with my hosts, Mary and Michael, however, I learned that New Zealand doesn't have many large discount stores. Instead, as they told me, small, specialized shops are much more common here. Since I wasn't familiar with Auckland and its plethora of small shops scattered about, they suggested I try a store called The Warehouse, located several miles away. Come to think of it, I'd been hearing radio ads for The Warehouse during my past few days in Auckland (with their irritating jingle: "The Warehouse. The Warehouse. Where everyone gets a bargain!"), but I wasn't sure what it was. With Mary's directions firmly in hand, I drove down to The Warehouse and got most of what I needed.
As I've been cruising around the Auckland area these past few days, I realized that Mary and Michael were right. The shopping situation in New Zealand is similar to what it was in America 40 or 50 years ago, before the giant discount stores like Target and Walmart started taking over. Being a foreigner and not knowing my way around Auckland, I admit that the Warehouse came in handy for me, but these types of big-box stores do come at a price. I hope things in New Zealand stay the way it is now, with lots of small, friendly Mom-and-Pop type stores. So Walmart, please keep out.
Above left: The Sky Tower dominates the Auckland skyline. It was completed a few years ago and is the highest structure in the southern hemisphere. Above center: Here's the view from the bottom. Above right: And a view from the top. For about $8, you can ride to the top of the Sky Tower and get a magnificent view, including this one, of the only freeway in Auckland (known as "The Motorway").
Above left: View from the inside. Above right: The Land of Aucks. That's Devonport, where I've been staying, off in the distance and the conical Rangitoto Island arising behind it.
Above left: Auckland is called "The City of Sails" and as every Kiwi will proudly tell you, it's currently the home of the America's Cup. Here's the Auckland marina. Above right: You can take a walking tour of the Harbor Bridge.
Above left: Looking straight down from the Sky Tower. Above right: And back down on the street.
Above left: A humorous sign in a store window. Gee, how do Kiwis really feel about Aussies? Actually, although the two countries have a bit of a rivalry, for the most part it's good-natured and is based on respect. Above right: Devonport is a picturesque historic suburb and, like many small towns in New Zealand, it's vibrant with lots of little shops right next to each other on long blocks. As I'm discovering, this is the typical pattern in small New Zealand towns, unlike the average American small town that has a decaying downtown with a Walmart on the outskirts.
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