Exploring the Big City with a Little One

Today is (fingers crossed) our last full day in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city. Starting tomorrow, our Kiwi adventure tour begins - hooray! To be honest, I can't wait to escape the concrete jungle and get into nature. We're fortunately staying in a charming wooden house district with lots of greenery and idyllic old villas (our Airbnb is a 140-year-old house) though. Compared to Tallinn, this area feels like Auckland's version of a Kalamaja meets Kadriorg, where downtown is a stone's throw away, yet you get that peaceful suburban vibe.

But before we leave the city skyline behind - here's a quick look back at our first 10 days in New Zealand.

Day or Night?

New Zealand runs 11 hours ahead of Estonia. So when we're getting ready for bed, Estonia's day is just beginning. Although I had a painful experience with prolonged jet lag when I visited California years ago, this time we adapted to the time difference surprisingly quickly. The long hours awake during the flight probably helped, as did landing in the afternoon New Zealand time - meaning we could go to bed at a "normal" time just a few hours later. Definitely something to keep in mind for future long-haul flights.

Urban Adventures with Dozens of New Friends

The week in Auckland has passed at a pretty relaxed pace. We've generally adopted the motto "one thing at a time" and don't stress if we can't spend dawn to dusk photographing every tourist attraction. Luckily, Rauno and I are totally in sync here - neither of us is a die-hard tourist, and we happily spend long mornings chilling at the Airbnb, drinking coffee and solving Sudoku (including one particular puzzle that's been driving us both nuts for several days now).

Besides Janis and Suzi, who've been traveling here for the last 2 months with a baby the same age (also named Pauline and coincidentally born on December 3rd like me), we've met up with Rauno's Kiwi sister Marian and her partner Ben into whose lap Pauline naturally climbed first chance she got. We're also planning to meet my old Argentinian friend Esteban's younger sister, who randomly flew to New Zealand this week and plans to travel around like us with her boyfriend. I last saw her in 2016 while traveling in Patagonia, and now here. Talk about a small world!

We've explored many local areas just by wandering around. One day we took a ferry to explore some defense fortifications on a hill (or as Estonians would say: a massive mountain) on the north coast. We've also walked around downtown a lot, visited a few beaches for swimming, and shopped at various stores for gear and summer clothes (I discovered upon arrival that my 2 packed shirts would only last one morning in this heat).

A special shoutout to Pauline, who's proven to be such a brave little traveler, overcoming all our previous worries about stroller-backpack-wherever-nap situations and keeping up brilliantly with our busy travel pace. Plus, she's a real people magnet, making new friends in every grocery store, park bench, and trail with her wide smile and enthusiastic waving. She immediately wants to climb into their arms too. So Rauno and I have no choice but to get to know these "friends" because, well... our child is in their arms acting like she could happily spend the rest of the day with them.

Being beach volleyball enthusiasts, we tried finding local clubs and Facebook groups to play with, but mysteriously, this sport isn't popular here at all. Even our Airbnb hosts said they didn't know anyone who plays volleyball. So we bought our own ball and are hoping lady luck will help us stumble upon fellow players. Fingers crossed the volleyball gods are on our side.

Friday the 13th - Maybe It's Actually Lucky?

...because that's when we got our long-awaited camping van - a converted 2006 Ford Transit that will be our home for who-knows-how-many months. Rauno promised to write a longer post about this purchase soon, but in short - we've got wheels.

As of today, we've had our first dinner in the van and put a few hundred kilometers on it. Generally, we're happy, except that the air conditioning refuses to cooperate, and once today we couldn't get it into first gear at a red light (thankfully it started working again after a minute and hasn't happened since). Rauno's heading to the mechanic first thing tomorrow morning to get these checked out. Hopefully, they'll be fixed quickly. Since the van came with a warranty, we won't have to pay for repairs, but it's still a hassle time and stress-wise. Here's hoping we can still hit the road tomorrow.