New Zealand, finally!!

Day 27: Auckland

We wake up, took the taxi and went to the airport. There, at our gate, we met again two Spanish girls, Ester and Laura, who were flying to Auckland like us. We have exchanged phone numbers and agreed to meet in Queenstown and may be combine some part of the route, since we all are going to the same place :-D

Before landing, aircraft team shows you on the personal tv screen a short movie what is not permitted to bring to New Zealand. Basically any type of food is totally prohibited, since it could bring some virus from other countries and NZ is really taking care of its environment.

We passed control with no problems, but our girls had an incident. They have forgotten they had two apples in the bag. According to rules, in case you mark in your landing declaration that you don’t have any food and customs finds food – it will cost you 200 NZ dollars (100 euro) fine. In case they find more food - you can even go to prison (no kidding).

In conclusion, after arguing with customs, girls have paid 200 NZ dollars. Welcome to NZ!

Kirin picked us up in the airport, we droped bags in his house, they made a brief visit to local dentist (which costed me 40 NZ dollars (20 euros) and more drugs i had to take for the tooth) and then finally went for some sightseeing around Auckland.

It was a windy day, as you can see, but the view was beautiful and sun was shining.

New Zealand Xmas maori tree, pohutukawa, was in blossom, it meant Xmas is close :-D

Later Mel came to meet us (our NZ friend, who was living in Barcelona where we met her about 2,5 years ago and now moved back to NZ).

All together we went to a Chinese restaurant, recommended by Kirin and had a tasty Chinese food, with meat, seafood, noodles and portions were just HUGE. Very cheap and tasty, yummy!

The day was finished and we went home to get prepared for tomorrow`s flight to Queenstown!