When I arrived in Auckland I was supposed to meet an Indian guy at the airport. I waited there some hours and I checked my facebook account, but he didn't come and he didn't contact me anymore. I have no news from him since that time and I have no idea what could happened with him.
I organized my stay in Auckland with a guy called Raddeck, but he worked on Saturday and I had nothing to do in the afternoon. I took a bus to the Queen's street, I walked to the port, but I had to pull my suitcase and it started to rain. I found a shelter in the buidling Cinemas. There were sofas upstairs and I lay down there for some hours. I was tired after the long flight. My host told me to meet him around 8pm at Starbucks, but he didn't tell me there were two of them on the Queen's street. I waited for him around half an hour in front of Cinemas, then I found a phone box and he said he was waiting at another Starbucks. He said he was just about to leave when I called him. Finally we met and we drove to a market with food stalls where we bought Japanese food takoyaki, okonomiyaki, steamed shrimp dumplings and spicy octupus. We also found durian fruit there and my host wanted to taste it so we bought it as well. Then we went home, my host lived close to the Half Moon Bay. We ate our dinner and then we watched the movie Blair witch 3, but we found it quite boring. My host had an excellent foot massage machine. In the morning we had to get up early because he worked on Sunday as well, he took me to the ferry and I went to the Queen's street. I had to go to Cinemas again because it was rainy and I had to wait for my bus to Whangarei which was departing at 1pm. I got there around 4pm, I waited at the information center, but my host came around 5.30pm. We went to play frisbee in the park and then Alex cooked dinner, we ate spaghetti bolognese and then we watched the movie Crucible about witchcraft trials. I was very tired, so I was falling asleep during the movie. My host lived in a caravan. On Monday morning we went to Whangarei falls and then to the kauri forest.

In the afternoon Alex took me to the Whangarei Native Bird Recovery Center where I had an opportunity to see and touch a one-legged kiwi bird Sparky. He lost his leg in a trap and he has been living in the Recovery Center since 2002. It was a great experience to meet him and caress him. He picked up worms from the soil with his long beak. You can see the video with him here
The was a museum in this center and I saw many photos with Sparky and also his predecessor Snoopy who also had only one leg. Sparky is used to being taken to schools and shown to kids for educational purposes. Then we saw a talking Myna bird outside the center.
Later in the evening we watched the movie Grey and we ate paste again. The following day we went to the Bay of islands but firstly we stopped in Kawakawa where we saw Hundertwasser Public Toilets. When we got to the Bay of islands I bought some souvenirs firstly and then I then I took a bath in the sea but I stayed there only 5 minutes because the water had only 15°C. The weather is New Zealand was very changeable, it was early spring there. When it was sunny it was possible to wear summer clothes, but when it was cloudy and rainy it was cold. Later we went to another beach in Ruakaka, but the weather wasn't so good anymore so I didn't swim there.

Later we drove to Auckland where we stayed one night with Alex's son. We had tacos for dinner. On Wednesday morning we drove to Waitomo caves. The ticket costed 50 NZD but I had a discount coupon so I paid only 37.5 NZD. My host didn't want to go inside caves because he had claustrophobia. I enjoyed visiting Waitomo caves a lot, we drifted on the boat and the view was spectacular, it looked like a night sky. It wasn't allowed to take the photos inside the cave which is a pity. In the afternoon we went to Tauranga where we spent a night with Alex's sister and her husband. We had chicken and potatoes for dinner. We had to travel very fast because my stay in NZ was short.

My decision to visit New Zealand this year came spontaneously. It all started when an employee of Thai Airways dropped fuel surcharge by mistake, causing the prices of return tickets from Europe decreased so much that it would be impossible for a dedicated traveler not to buy it. I chose a return ticket from Munich to Auckland which costed around 550 Eur. There was also a layover in Bangkok. I started searching hosts in Munich and New Zealand quite a long time before my departure, but due to the fact it was Octoberfest in Munich I had a big problem to find a host there. It wasn't easy to find a host in certain parts of New Zealand as well, I had a luck that my host in Whangarei had many relatives and they could host us.
I bought a bus ticket to Munich and I left Prague on 27th September at 5.15pm. I arrived in Munich around 10pm and my host Chris came to pick me up at the station. We walked in the city center by night and we went to a pub where we people sang traditional songs and we drank pear alcoholic drink. We got home after midnight, it was already quite cold during the night. In the morning my host prepared a breakfast for me, I ate salmon with bread. Then we drove to Nymphenburg which is a Baroque Palace with a beautiful garden. Weather was sunny and warm, it was around 20-25°C.

After visiting the palace we went to the BMW museum and then we walked to the hill where we had a great view on the Olympiapark. Then we took metro to the city center and we walked to a fair. Munich was amazing during Oktoberfest, women wore traditional costumes called dirndl, everything was lively and colorful. I enjoyed my stay there so much that I was really sorry that I couldn't stay longer. We walked to Marienplatz where we were supposed to meet Frank from couchsurfing. We walked around and then we went for dinner, we were searching a restaurant but we couldn't find anything convenient, so finally we had to go to a Chinese restaurant. Frank had to leave soon after dinner and I went for a drink with Chris. We returned home before midnight. In the morning I had a breakfast and then I travelled by S-Bahn to the airport. My flight to Bangkok departed at 2.25pm and we landed in Bangkok around 6am. They gave us food twice during the flight, it wasn't very tasty. I slept only two hours during the flight. I had arranged two meetings in Bangkok with people from facebook group, first one was Jeff who I met for one hour at the airport and we drank tea together in a café. Then I took the train to the Nana station in the Sukhumvit district. I met a girl from Belarus there, her name was Sveta. We walked together to the Terminal 21 shopping mall. Weather was sunny and humid, it was around 28°C. It was rain period there but I was lucky that it didn't rain that day. There was a food court in the Terminal 21 and we went for lunch there. Then we walked in the city for some time but I had to return to the airport because my flight was departing at 6.45pm.



When I got to the airport I was very tired already so I found some chairs where I could lie down for some time. I didn't sleep because I was afraid of missing the flight. When we finally got on the plane I was so tired that I fell asleep already before we took off and I slept around 5 or 6 hours. It was dark on the plane because blinds were closed but one passenger sitting in front of me opened them for a while and I saw red dawn above Australia. There was a 12 year old boy from Zimbabwe sitting next to me and we had a talk, then we were served breakfast but the food was disgusting, it was scrambled eggs with chicken sausage. I ate it anyway because I didn't know when I would have an opportunity to get some food again. We landed in Auckland around noon local time.