Friday 17th Feb

 Well after everything the world has been through over the past few years, it was great to be able to travel overseas again. We decided that New Zealand looked good for this holiday but considering the past six weeks or so we wondered if we’d made the wrong decision. First the city of Auckland had terrible floods at the end of Jan. The airport was badly affected. Then on Tuesday 14th Feb, tropical cyclone, Gabrielle struck the north island badly affecting many areas, with strong winds damaging properties and down pours washing out roads and causing more flooding. Finally on Wednesday 15th, a strong earthquake struck the city of Wellington! Anyway despite all this we arrived in Auckland around 7PM (N.Z. time) after leaving home at 6:15AM. The New Zealand Breakers basketball team were on our flight returning to Auckland after their matches in Australia. They were so tall and most of them were in economy class though at least 6 had the exit rows which they would have needed! Those of us who are closer to the ground really have nothing to complain about. The flooding from back in late Jan. had caused significant damage to the area which had the car rental offices. It took quite a bit of walking for us to finally locate the temporary offices! After picking up our car we successfully navigated the roads to our accommodation and managed to find a fish and chip shop still open at 9.30PM for our dinner.

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