Adventures in New Zealand – My 4 Day Auckland Quickie

From the very first day I arrived in Australia….all I heard was:

 “YOU HAVE TO GET YOUR BUTT TO NEW ZEALAND!!!!!”

Thinking it was odd people were already trying to send me off to another country upon arrival, a trip over there was something I knew I had to do.

 My plan was to work from my New Zealand office for 2 days, to dazzle our New Zealander clients with my American charm, of course. But also to have two days of fishing, boating and all the other adventures New Zealand had to offer.

So..That was the plan!! But this is what happened……

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This was originally published July 2015 but has now been given a makeover for 2019. Enjoy 🙂

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The Airport

I get to the airport after work on a Friday night. I am in a red dress, a winter red dress with long sleeves, in no way like a “sexy lady in red hubba hubba”, type dress. I put my stuff down to go through the scanner as I watch everyone in front of me just walking through. When it comes to my turn, instead of just breezing through like everyone else, authority grabs me and guides me towards the whole body scanner.

I stand inside having no idea what the heck to do with my limbs,  while simultaneously trying to refer to the horrible Ikea looking pictures on the wall for guidance.

They run the scan – I see a green light –  but before I was able to get 2 steps out of the machine they grab me saying,

“Miss, we need to run it again”

“Noooo.. But. What whyyyy?? Just hurry up and let me get to the duty-free chocolate already!!!!!!”

They full body scan me again and I am green again so they let me go to get my bags. As I grab for my stuff I have another person pull me aside who starts tapping all over my body with a metal wand.  Confused if he was trying to turn me into Cinderella or a rabbit, I just stood there annoyed as he was tap tap tapping all over my body. He explained it was just a routine explosive test and not to worry, but at that moment he tapped my purse and a loud beep went off followed by a red light. REALLY!?!

AWESOME.

THIS CAN’T BE GOOD.

 They then rescanned my body before pulling me aside in a private room where they continue the fun by emptying my purse out. Candy wrappers, casino cards, calculators, hot sauce packets – you know, the normal stuff – one by one they empty out every item before confirming I was indeed NOT carrying explosives (DUH) and finally let me on my jolly way after over 20 minutes of bullying.

Now feeling a bit violated, molested and grumpy from lack of chocolate I WAS NOT consuming, I was really ready to get the heck out of Sydney and off to beautiful New Zealand.

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Auckland

When I arrived in New Zealand, it looked exactly like how I imagined…..

Look at its beauty in all of its Glory!!!!

Tired, rainy and hungry, I quickly checked into the hotel and ordered my routine room service meal.  Not being what one would call a “morning person”, I decided to be lame and hit the hay as I had client meetings starting way too early for any actual brain functioning.

I take that back, I can beeee a morning person… but “morning” needs to start after 11 🙂

When I woke up I sat and admired the stunning views before heading off to my meetings. They just involve your normal charm here and charm there, and this American struggling to understand anything anyone was saying with their crazy New Zealander accents.

Luckily there was FOOD!

Plenty of food to stuff my mouth with when asked a question I didn’t know the answer. Thus, leaving my co-worker with no choice but to answer it for me.

Yes,  I know, I AM A GENIUS.

Once the show was over, we went back to the office to do some actual work, and what I mean by actual work is buy a bottle of Champagne to celebrate… ummm…. well…

Screw it, we just wanted some champagne!!

We spent the evening going bar to bar all over the city to check out the nightlife and culture.  Everywhere we went there was great wine, delicious food, and very friendly people.  I really enjoyed the vibes and energy I was feeling from all around the city, or actually… that could have just been all the wine.

Hotel Management

That next morning I woke up to very loud knocks on the door from the cleaning lady.  Annoyed as it was louder than HELL, I told the lady to come back later as I was still getting my beauty sleep – which means – Still drunk, too much wine, need sleep.

About 30 minutes later I hear the knocking again.

“ Stiiiiiiiiillllllllllllllll sleeepinggggggggggggggggggggg goooooo awayyyyyyyyy”.

I fall back asleep just to get woken up AGAIN 20 minutes later with an even louder banging.  I said again, “please come back later I am still sleeping lady” but this time a man responded.

“ Miss this isn’t the cleaner, it is the hotel manager, you were supposed to check out over 3 hours ago.”

Hmm. Shit.

“Ummm yea totally just in the shower (turns on shower)  checking out shortly”

Whooppsieeeee!

But in my defense, that bed was way too comfy. To have slept less than 12 hours in it would have been a disgrace! 🙂

I spent the rest of my morning, well…afternoon, wandering the city, going from coffee place to pub to restaurant to get some work done. One place was an Irish pub where I had the most delicious fish and chips.  The rest of O’Hagen’s food looked amazing, definitely not your average pub food.

I had the harbor to my left, some hot guys to my right, and my email and chips in front of me.

Not too shabby for a Friday afternoon.

Auckland Sky Tower

Up next I stopped at the Sky Tower as I am a sucker for being anywhere with beautiful views.  It is just unfortunate this sucker just also happens to have a very very bad fear of heights!

As the elevator began to take me to the top deck, I began to have a bit of an anxiety attack as the elevator is GLASS. Glass, freakin glass where you are forced to see everything outside as you are going up.

NOT COOL!

 I clung on the handrails for dear life, kinda screaming bloody murder, kinda making a scene.. which kinda freaked out the 4 other people in the elevator making them scream bloody murder along with me.

Good times… Good times..

Once we got up there, all 184 meters up there, I was finally able to gather my stomach from off the ground and actually take a look outside. Within seconds, I could see the view was quite breathtaking and worth the near death experience I had just encountered.  I set up my work station and spent the rest of the afternoon working from on top of Auckland and enjoying the 360 views. The only problem I had was…

How the heck was I going to get back down!?

Piha Beach

The following day my coworker and her partner took me to Piha Beach to do some hiking up to a waterfall.

YES YES YES! Finally some me against nature type action!

The beach was beautiful with green teal water shimmering from the pockets of sunlight. And the sand was black! I do not recall ever seeing such powdered black sand anywhere before, making this beach even more divine.

 The hike up to the waterfall was easy thanks to my tramping shoes 🙂 and about 2 hours later we reached mother earth at her greatest.

We were only able to sneak away for 2 hours before the weather again took a turn for the worse and El Nino came pouring down. We escaped to a local winery, where we indulged ourselves in delicious wine while staring out at a gloomy vineyard.

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Too rainy to do anything else, we headed back home to drink some scotch and play some poker.

I totally won, and what I mean by won was absolutely lost!

(And I even cheated, wtf?)

Concluding…

The rest of my trip was supposed to be filled with outdoor New Zealand adventures. Sadly instead, I became a prisoner to the weather.

So that meant… none of this:

Only:

Rain rain rain and not even fun rain.

Rain with wind and rain with hate!

I believe I made the best out of my quickie in New Zealand. I am definitely looking forward to a 2nd trip back that is hopefully a bit more…dry? 🙂

<3 Hot Mess