Auckland

Auckland Travel Guide

As you fly into Auckland, New Zealand's gateway city, you might wonder where the city is. Most people arriving for the first time, and even New Zealanders coming home, are impressed by the seascape and green forest that dominate the view on the approach to the airport.

The drive from the airport does little to dispel the clean, green image so many people have of the country. The scenery is commanded by some of the city's 46 volcanic hills, their grass kept closely cropped by those four-legged lawn mowers known as sheep. And reading the highway signs will begin to give you a taste of the unusual and sometimes baffling Maori place-names around the country.

Yet a couple of days in this city of about 1.1 million will reveal a level of development and sophistication that belies first impressions. Since the early 1990s, Auckland has grown up in more ways than one. Many shops are open seven days, central bars and nightclubs welcome patrons well into the night, and a cosmopolitan mix of Polynesians, Asians, and Europeans all contribute to the cultural milieu. (In fact, Auckland has the world's largest single population of Pacific Islanders.) Literally topping things off is the 1,082-ft Sky Tower, dwarfing everything around it and acting as a beacon for the casino, hotel, and restaurant complex that opened early in 1996. This is the newest, if least pervasive, face of modern New Zealand.

In the midst of the city's activity, you'll see knots of cyclists and runners. Like all other New Zealanders, Aucklanders are addicted to the outdoors -- especially the water. There are some 70,000 powerboats and sailing craft in the Greater Auckland area -- about one for every four households. And a total of 102 beaches lie within an hour's drive of the city center. The city has enhanced its greatest asset, Waitemata Harbour -- a Maori name meaning "sea of sparkling waters." The city staged its first defense of the America's Cup in the year 2000, and the regatta was a catalyst for major redevelopment of the waterfront. The area is now known as Viaduct Basin or, more commonly, Viaduct and has some of the city's most popular bars, cafés, and restaurants.

Auckland is not easy to explore. Made up of a sprawling array of neighborhoods (Kiwis call them suburbs), the city spreads out on both shores of Stanley Bay and Waitemata Harbour. It's best to have a car for getting around between neighborhoods, and even between some city-center sights. If you are nervous about driving on the left, especially when you first arrive, purchase a one-day Link Pass or, for a circuit of the main sights, an Explorer Bus Pass, and get acquainted with the city layout.

North of the city, the Bay of Islands is both beautiful, for its lush forests, splendid beaches, and shimmering harbors, and historic, as the place where Westernized New Zealand came into being with the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. Southeast of Auckland is the rugged and exhilarating Coromandel Peninsula, with mountains stretching the length of its middle and a Pacific coastline afloat with picturesque islands.

Photo: Coromandel Tourism