Whangaparaoa

MARCH 2019

Our Apartment

We were lucky to find a place to rent just around the corner from our friends’ house. The only problem was to try and pronounce our street address correctly, not even talking of writing it down. Whangaparaoa … that’s going to take some practice.

The house right at the back is where our one-bedroom apartment is situated in which we will stay for the next couple of months

Our one-bedroom apartment is on the ground level of a family’s house. Fortunately for us, it was furnished. We only had to buy bedding and a couple of kitchen utensils … but we quickly realised it was quite expensive to buy stuff in New Zealand! We still had to convert our South African currency (South African Rand) to the New Zealand Dollar – and that was to multiply everything with 10!!

The apartment did not come with much furniture, but we were happy to have a bed, couch, fridge and stove

There was a great view over Gulf Harbour

Happy to have a couple of chairs outside (but not so much about the gas grill)

Back in South Africa, we have made a fire at least twice a week to prepare our meat over the coals (in South Africa, we call this “braai”) … we were not so sure that the gas grill could replace a fire.

Yeah nah (New Zealand slang for yes/no) – this gas grill is not going to do it for us

We took the first opportunity to visit a shop to buy a replacement for the gas grill … and were very happy to find a fire pit, as well as bags of South African coals (yes, we were just as surprised!!)

Now we were in business to get a fire started!

Although it was not a proper South African fire, it was much better than a gas grill

We decided not to buy a car for the time we’re going to be in New Zealand, but rather make use of public transport (which is, by the way, great in New Zealand). And we were quite happy to find a bus stop literally 5 minutes from our apartment. We bought AT HOP cards for the two of us at a local store on which we have loaded some money to make use of the bus – this way, travelling was easy in New Zealand.

There was a beautiful beach walking distance from our apartment and we spent many days going for a stroll and ending up at this beach.

This beach was close to our apartment and we spent many days here while it was still late summer

Happiness was to have found accommodation on the outskirts of Auckland and even more so that it was so close to our new friends.

Our friends took us on our first New Zealand road trip within the first month of our arrival. Click here if you want to read more on Part 1 of our road trip to Ohope and Whakatane.