Caboose

After the Magic bus picked me up again we only had a short journey up to the coast at Mount Maunganui. This is a popular beach resort and, with the Christmas holiday coming up, it was absolutely heaving.

There’s a nice long beach, a hill at one end and not much else to be said about the place.

The following day was my last on the Magic bus, the usual stops for coffee and scenery and finally arriving in Auckland around 2pm. I’d booked into the Base ACB hostel, in an office block right in the centre of Auckland. Like the other big backpackers I’ve stayed in it wasn’t great: creaky bunks, impersonal and the feeling that they’re trying to extract money out of you every way they can (NZD4 for the washing machine and expensive internet).