10/11/2017 - Two out of 53

After buying the car (see last blog), we didn't drive straight home. Both from Pakuranga, our previous suburb, and from Glen Innes, you can see a big green hill. This mountain is located in the suburb of Mount Wellington. We walked from the regional train station towards the summit. However, Mount Wellington is not just any mountain. It forms the 'Auckland Volcanic Field' together with 52 other volcanoes. When walking around Auckland, you will often come across huge green hills - all of them inactive volcanoes.
After a short but intense climb, we reached the summit of Mount Wellington. It feels so surreal when a deep crater suddenly forms in front of you. Luckily, we don't have a fear of heights, as the New Zealanders don't believe in barriers or the like. They probably trust in common sense. We calmly walked around the crater and enjoyed the great weather and the beautiful view.
Since it only takes about 30 minutes to walk home from Mount Wellington, we decided to skip the train.

For the next day, November 10, 2017, a visit to the bank in Auckland City was on the agenda again. Applying for the tax number turned out to be much more difficult than expected. This is because we changed our place of residence between opening the bank account and applying for the tax number. However, the New Zealand authorities always require a verified place of residence, which is why the issuance of our tax numbers keeps getting delayed. In short: we have to provide the bank with our current address, with the help of a letter from our hosts. Once this is done, we can apply for our tax numbers - because the addresses must match.

Since we were already in the downtown area of Auckland, we wanted to use the rest of the day to visit another sight. So this time we went to Mount Eden, also a volcano. The dimensions were even bigger. Having overcome the ascent in the midday sun, we arrived at the volcano's crater with many other tourists. The special feature of Mount Eden is its central location - a large crater in front of you and the skyscrapers of Auckland in the background, a unique sight. It's unimaginable what devastating damage a new eruption would mean for the city.
Around 4:00 p.m., we started our journey home. We went to the nearest bus stop and caught a direct connection to Glen Innes. We had already noticed the massive traffic volume at this time in the past few days. We find it shocking how poorly developed the public transportation system is around Auckland. Most commuters desperately try to drive directly to work by car, which is why the roads and highways are more than congested. So our bus ride home took much longer than planned.

Once we arrived home, we relaxed a bit and looked at the pictures we took during the last few days.