Around 75% of the entire population of New Zealand lives in Auckland. Which is strange, as the city seems so unlike the rest of the country. The pace, for one, is about twice as fast as anywhere else in New Zealand, and it also seems that restaurants stay open after 8pm!

We stayed at a beach-side campsite in Takapuna, a suburb on the North Shore, from which we commuted into the city on the Devonport Ferry. Auckland has been called 'Sydney with training wheels' and you can easily understand why. Approaching the city on the ferry is a very similar experience to that of Sydney's Manly ferry, but despite Auckland's skyscrapers and the fairground appeal of the Sky Tower, the skyline is noticeably more downscale than its Aussie cousin. You could describe this as typical Kiwi understatement vs. brash Aussie showmanship, but to be honest I think we both missed the wow factor of Sydney's Opera-House / Harbour Bridge combo.

Our first day in town we took a walking tour of the city, from the ferry terminal in the CBD up through trendy Chancery District into Albert Park, which sits on a hill that would have looked out over the city had the skyscrapers not got in the way. We dropped by a redux version of the Auckland Art Museum (the main museum is currently being refurbed) and saw an interesting exhibition of 18th century Maori portraits by two famous artists of their day: Charles Goldie & Gottfried Lindauer. As misguided public opinion of the day was that the Maori were a 'dying race' the pictures tended to have a melancholy air very similar to the old portraits you see of Native Americans.

There are lots of building works in Auckland as the city prepares itself for next year's Rugby World Cup. As a part of this facelift the next stop on our tour, the civic centre, was fenced off and crawling with hard working hard hats. We circumvented the site and then trekked south up the hill through Myers Park to uber-trendy the St Kevin's Arcade, full of boutique fashion brands, vintage clothing and comic book stores. Flagging after the accumulated exertions of 3 weeks on the road, we then very gratefully retreated to an Odeon cinema to watch Scott Pilgrim vs. The World – Our last English cinema experience for who knows how long?

It was fun to be back in a city again, especially on a Friday afternoon with its boozy lunches and pre-weekend buzz, but at the same time our impression of Auckland was that some of the things we liked best about New Zealand – the laid-back pace, the always-friendly people, their lack of pretence and sense of humour – were somehow missing, ditched in the race to become a modern global city. Maybe I'm just more of a Southern Man...



The following day we woke up early to catch the ferry out to Rangitoto volcano. What a great name! Rangitoto is Maori for 'Bloody Sky', a description its last eruption 'only' 600 years ago. Whatever it means, it's definitely fun to chant in a tribal fashion a la Joe vs The Volcano. RAN-GI-TO-TO-RAN-GI-TO-TO. The whole of the Auckland region is pockmarked with active and dormant volcanoes, to which it owes its bumpy landscape. My GCSE geography allowed me to classify Rangitoto as a classic 'shield' volcano (thanks Mr McGrath) whose gentle sides were relatively easy to walk up. It started to rain as we got to the crater rim, but we still got a great view of the bay and the city in the distance.

We spent our final 24 hours in Auckland preparing for Phase 3 of our Grand Tour: South America. This involved washing all our clothes, eating one last meal of fish&chips, attempting to clean the van and conceal a dent I'd put in the rear bumper, and purchasing vast quantities of western medicine. We've been diligently listening to our Michel Thomas Introductory Spanish on the car stereo over the last 5 weeks, so here's hoping we'll be up to the challenges of a new language and a new continent!