Daily Photo – Rain on the Auckland Motorway

When I arrived in Auckland, I had plenty of plans for the next few days, all carefully assembled in my head with great care somewhere over the Cook Strait, and like most plans made at 30,000 feet, it seemed both admirable and faintly heroic at the same time. Wherever possible, I intended to walk, only using public transport if absolutely necessary. You see so much more of a place when you’re not trapped in a moving vehicle. Sure, you get places quicker, but you also miss a great deal of what’s going on around you. On this trip, I’d vowed to only use it if I had no other option.

That was of course, until I stepped off the plane.

Even before that moment, there had been a few warning signs that the weather wasn’t altogether pleasant. The first was that the terminal, along with most of the city, appeared to be hidden beneath a low blanket of cloud that seemed to have swallowed everything between us and where the airport ought to be. The second clue came from outside the plane, where the ground crew were scurrying about in the sort of gear you only wear when you’re expecting to get thoroughly drenched.

An announcement from the captain then confirmed my suspicions, it was raining!

Not the gentle, polite sort of rain you can wander about in without much concern. This was hard, heavy, determined rain that makes you question whether going outside is a sensible life choice. The kind that falls with such enthusiasm that even ducks might think twice.

In fact, the MetService was warning that the wind and rain could soon become severe enough to cause disruption across the city. I disembarked, found a bus into town, and watched from my seat as the rain pelted down. By the time we arrived somewhere near where I was staying, if anything, the weather had only worsened.

My plans, it seemed, were going to need a fairly substantial rethink.