Awesome Auckland

Downtown Auckland, New Zealand on the horizon

We have been so busy getting settled in our new home that I'm afraid we have already fallen behind on blogging, but don't despair!  My aim is to rectify that now...

Our first week flew by and we had a wonderful time in New Zealand's largest city: Auckland.  A great many people here (both Kiwis and fellow immigrants) have offered sympathetic comments about how hard it is to move to a new country.  It certainly is a challenge - but in our case it has been an amazingly comfortable and pleasant ordeal.  This is largely thanks to the wonderful hospitality of Kiri's Uncle Graeme.

Graeme was a wonderful host to us; providing a comfortable place to stay, wonderful meals, driving us around, and practically re-teaching me how to drive our new car, in the meanwhile sharing good conversation and good laughs.  We also got to spend some really fun time with Kiri's Auckland cousins: Saskia and her husband Lance, and Marius and his girlfriend Courtney.  We had a great time hanging out with them.  We miss our family and friends elsewhere in the world, so it was especially great comfort to be so welcomed here!

Graeme made our transitional first week full of hospitality and humor.

One of the really cool things about Auckland is that the suburbs seem to have a lot of green areas, some of which are interconnected with nice trails, and have been restored with native plants and habitat for endemic animals.  Just up the road from Graeme's house was Le Roys Bush.  'Bush' is what the Kiwis call 'woods' or 'wilderness.'  Le Roys bush was a good place for us to start learning New Zealand native plants and we enjoyed walking and jogging there.  Near the path there were beautiful Kauri trees which can be killed by a disease that is spread in soil, so we disinfected our shoes before entering the bush:

Scrub, scrub, scrub - die pathogens, die!  Protecting native trees.

 The scenery was wonderful, and Tui birds were singing their bizarre, enchanting song all around us!

There are lots of plants, but in NZ it is just 'The Bush'

We saw stick insects, inchworm caterpillars, native wood pigeons, Australian parrots, and even spotted one of New Zealand's native geckos!

Gecko! The 'common gecko' is apparently not really all that common.

Sometimes you just have to catch lizards...

...and stink bugs.

You will probably not be surprised to hear that I was very excited to see some new to me species of Stink Bugs in New Zealand.  I caught the one above on our way into the bank to set up our new accounts.  It turns out that this species has a very potent odor - I think I may have left a strong impression on the ANZ tellers.

Even though we have been very busy getting situated in Aotearoa, this arrival saga feels far less stressful than leaving did.  We had time to watch a few films, do some leisure reading, and cook some meals.  It's nice to be able to cook together at an easy pace, and not be serious all the time : )

Naked chef.

Marius informed us that there was something really special about Le Roys Bush - it is one of the few places on the planet where one can find New Zealand's famous 'glow worms'.  These juvenile flies emit light in a similar fashion to fireflies, but unlike fireflies, the light is constant and stationary.  The effect is very surreal and serene - the photo does not do it justice.  Marius offered to be our guide for a night hike to the glowworms:

Found a weta! One of NZ's charismatic and unique insects.

Stream bank by day...

...constellation by night!  Glowworms!

At the end of our wonderful first week, we loaded up Yousaf and headed South to our new hometown of Hamilton!