Devonport

For the first few days of our stay, we found an airbnb in Devonport, a little suburb just a short ferry ride away from downtown Auckland. It turned out to be a wonderful base as we worked through the logistics of settling into our new country: getting a bank account, buying a car, finding a place to live. We thought we'd cross these three items off our list pretty quickly, but as you'll see in the posts to come, it took quite a while to complete them all. The bank account was our first hurdle. What seemed like a pretty straightforward task turned out to be a complicated catch 22. We could not open an account until we had a permanent address (which the bank verifies by mailing you a letter at this residential address). And of course, it's hard to get a permanent residence without a bank account! It took some juggling and quite a bit of patience, but finally, after what seemed like endless trips to the bank and lots of waiting days in between, we were the proud holders of a New Zealand bank account.

  Here's our first airbnb in NZ. We stayed on the bottom floor of this Devonport house.

Complete with tire swing in the backyard (wonderful for kid entertainment as David and I tried to figure out our next steps).

In between trips to the bank, we climbed Mount Victoria several times, a cinder cone in Devonport, complete with old canons, bunkers, amazing views and great sunsets.

 (Devonport is in the foreground of this picture; Auckland, with the Sky Tower, is across the bay.)