auckland travel tips and stories. Vacations ideas, cruises spa and resorts

One of New Zealand’s most exhilarating and spectacular tourist attractions.
The Auckland City Sky Tower is the tallest tower in the southern hemisphere at 328 metres. Located in the heart of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. With picturesque views from the tower, come in and enjoy one of SKY CITY’s restaurants and bars. There’s something to suit everyone’s taste.

The Sky Tower, built in 1997, is an Auckland landmark icon. Upper levels accommodate communications equipment, three circular public observation levels – Sky Deck, Main Observation level, and the Sky Lounge, a revolving restaurant, from each of which you can get a 360-degree view of Auckland. This 170 ton tower attracts over 600,000 visitors each year and is owned and operated by SKY CITY Entertainment Group. Tourists come for numerous reasons but the main one being Sky tower contains New Zealand’s largest casino and offers table and slot machine gaming. The tower also features the Sky Jump, a 192 metre controlled fall from the observation deck of the tower similar to bungee jumping. Knowing that Chunkmonster is the proud collector of numerous casino chips, agreed to venture up the hill with some of my Kiwi colleagues.

As principal sponsor of Auckland Festival, SKY CITY is celebrating it’s association with the Auckland Festival by lighting the Sky Tower orange.
Sky jump is a whole new way of falling off things. Jumpers wear a “flying suit” and full body harness. They are then clipped to the jump cable by professional Jump masters and simply “step off”. The cable drum rotates as the cable feeds out, causing air resistance against fan blades on the end of the drum. This means Jumpers are effectively riding on a cushion of air. Jumpers fall very quickly until near the ground then decelerate to a safe landing speed. Ground rush is awesome.Sky Tower is beautiful at nigh where its lit up and is more visible than ever, especially at Christmas, Easter and well-marked events in the calendar, where sky tower is lit up in fantastic different colours. Its usually green and red at Christmas and pink to mark breast cancer awareness day. The colours vary throughout the year and you never know what colour it will be next. The Sky Tower is an icon on the Auckland skyline and the most prominent feature of SKY CITY Entertainment Group’s flagship property.

New Zealand is divided into two main islands, North Island and South Island. To the south of South island there’s much smaller island called Stewart Island, but anyway, the most important islands are North and South, and between them there’s small sea called the Cook Straits. These majestic wilderness areas incorporate World Heritage Sites, fjords and glaciers, lakes, ski areas, rugged coastline, native forest, and world-class hiking tracks. Most people live on the North Island and that’s where the two biggest cities are, Wellington (the capital) and Auckland which is actually the biggest city in terms of population: over one million people live there. Piha Beach is located approx 45 minutes from Auckland. It is a very popular with keen surfers and beach lovers alike. Wellington is on the south coast of North Island on the Cook Straits to the west side. It’s very nice place with a beautiful harbour. Auckland is in the north east of North Island, on the coast too. People call it “the city of sails” because of all the sailing boats there and all the region to the north of Auckland is known as Northland. It’s the hottest part of the country with lots and lots beaches, very popular for holidays.
Both North and South Islands are very mountainous. There are several volcanoes on North Island and South Island is really divided into two halves a big range of mountains that runs from north to south, called the Southern alps. There’s very, very beautiful with lots of lakes and fjords in the south. That’s the area where most people go skiing or do other adventure sports such as climbing or bungee jumping… Sea food and wine are among New Zealand’s favourites which tourists should not miss.
To be continued