van wyk journeys 
Well, today I will be writing about Friday rather than Thursday as it disappeared somewhere over the south pacific.
Friday we arrived early in the morning; 5:04 am to be exact. The next hour or so was interesting working our way through NZ customs. We made sure that we tossed our trail mix and had our hiking boots separated and very clean as the New Zealand custom’s biological control is pretty tough when it comes to many products coming into their country. I was so paranoid I swallowed my gum and had Joan toss hers in the garbage before customs control.
Once past custom control, we made our way to the Skybus. This took us to central Auckland but as it was still dark outside it really looked like any other place in the world in the dark.
We arrived in central Auckland, quickly got our bearings and started walking in the direction of where we believed the hotel was, we had the direction right but kind of became aware that it was all uphill, really uphill, no really uphill for like a kilometre at least.
We made it to the hotel and thought OMG what did we book. Turns out it had its shortcomings but don’t they all. I guess the biggest one was it was uphill but then everything is. Seems I did not catch on that Auckland was hilly, not big ones but steep ones.
As we were early for hotel check-in, we headed for the waterfront where Joan quickly found a two a three-hour walking tour group that we joined. Alex, our tour guide was more like a performer. She entertained us about Auckland’s somewhat seedy past, not much like anywhere else but entertaining.
So as a second sidebar we took a ferry to Waiheke Island where we got on a hop-on hop-off bus. We got off at the first stop but we were too tired to get off at any more stops. The amusing bus driver gave us a penny tour of the island. Lots of wineries.
Walked back to the hotel. Of course, it was still uphill.