We spent the last couple of days in Auckland with our lovely “adoptive New Zealand parents”.
After taking looking at the New Zealand night sky for the last time, we left Scott Road at 5am – the trip to Auckland Airport took just under an hour.
Arriving at AKL airport we were quite excited to find out whether our business class upgrade went through and… it did! :-)
So following check-in we went straight through to the Air New Zealand lounge and enjoyed a pancake breakfast. The business class presented itself in an older outfit but the service was nevertheless great and the staff was very lovely.
The relaxed arrival in Melbourne turned into a rather annoying hour or so waiting for our luggage and again waiting in an endless line (which strechts twice across baggage terminal!) for the bio-hazard security check. For Customs we had express lane passes, but there was no express lane for the bio check.
After checking our entry cards and being reassured by us that we only had some chewing gum and chocolate, but no other food with us, the officer decided we wouldn’t need to go through the luggage scan and just pointed us to the direct exit. After another 40 minutes we arrived via SkyBus at Southern Cross Station – where we put our luggage into lockers for the day.
‘Let the exploring begin’ we thought and off we went trying to find a) something to eat, b) an Australian mobile predaid SIM and c) the tourist information.
While a) wasn’t too hard (we ended up with Pizza) we found b) to be rather challenging.
Not that there aren’t any telecom (or similar) shops around. The pure offers of different pre pay plans from one company alone however, was somewhat confusing.
Since Barbaras new toy – her HTC desire HD – would be able to share it’s UMTS connection with my laptop we were aiming for a good option to use lot’s of data.
We checked Vodafone and Optus. They both had deals that would get us 3GB of data for $50 – not too bad, but Optus was introducing a new plan “dollar days” which had options for 1, 2 or 3 AUD per day, where the $3 option gives you unlimited txt messages (SMS) and unlimited data. Additionally, if using it the whole week (Monday – Friday), the weekend would be free.
Good deal (probably).
After fiddling around with the mobile data settings of the phone. Optus doesn’t sell that particular model and the crew initially wasn’t much help. For some reason they didn’t think that all Android phones would work using the same APN setting, but that it was model depending. wonder how they came up with that one….
At 5pm we met our couchsurfing host at DFO South Warf – a factory outlet shopping center just across the river from the world trade center. Phillip gave us a lift home. Very nice of him! :)
About 20 hours after getting up in Scott Road, Stanmore Bay, Auckland we fall asleep in Scott Street, Elwood, Melbourne. :-)
