Where is everybody?

Becks' diary:

The stat that there are more sheep than people in New Zealand seems less impressive when you realise that the population is only 4 million. It's only a small place, but people here can afford to spread out a bit, and they do. Auckland is more suburb than urb and compared with the Asian cities we've just left, the centre feels like a small town.

With nothing in particular planned until we pick up our van we have 2 days here to laze around and sleep off the jet lag. On the first night we head out to Mount Eden, an upmarket suburb, for dinner. The main street looks like a set straight out of Neighbours and inside the restaurant the food is just as familiar. There is a long wine list of exclusively Kiwi stuff that we can't wait to sample from the vineyard later on in the trip.

Apparently "boy-racers" are a big problem all over NZ and later that night the only sound in an otherwise silent city is cars with swollen exhausts tearing around the main streets. According to the newspaper the following day, the issue has become so serious that patients in one of Auckland's hospitals have been moved to escape the roar of the small engines with big exhausts.

With only one full day to expore Auckland we set out on a 13km walk coast-to-coast from one side of the main peninsula of the city to the other. As you might imagine in such a spread out place, there is a lot of green space here and we cross park after park until we reach The Domain, a rounded hill formed by one of Auckland's 30 or so volcanos. From the top there are great views over the downtown and up to North Shore, a suburb so large that it apprently counts as New Zealand's 4th largest city. Further on we arrive at Cornwall Park and walk up the side of One Tree Hill past a wedding outdoors in the sun and in a beautiful setting. Through a couple more suburbs and that's it, we've walked from one side of Auckland to another in a few hours.

For dinner we head for more Japanese food (it's becoming an addiction) and a drink on some pretty cobbled street in the centre before returning to bed anxious to pick up the van and be on our way.