Pokemon Go Tour of Auckland

This is a Magikarp. You can catch these.

We had only one plan when we decided to visit Auckland - to visit Hobbiton. This was set for Tuesday so Monday and Wednesday were set aside for exploring. How does one explore a new place if you have no desire to spend lots of money at tourist type places and the children are more interested in playgrounds and more simple experiences?

As we all are playing Pokemon Go we decided to use the Pokemon Go maps to decide which way to go. The only way to move ahead in the game is to actually visit places. Different creatures (Pokemons) appear in physical places so sitting around will not help you. Also, you will typically find water based creatures near rivers, beaches and lakes, ground based ones in the country and so on.

The next few posts will show some of the interesting places we discovered using the game based directions we followed.

In case you haven't seen Pokemon Go, the maps are based on Google Maps but with no street or place names. All the paths - whether roads or foot paths - look similar although having varying widths.

This is NOT a Magikarp. It is a dead fish.

One thing the children did find in a shallow inlet next to the beach was a dead fish.
"Look Dad! Look! Come here, see what I found."
So I rushed over and saw the dead fish floating in the water.
"It's a dead fish," I cleverly commented.
"Yeah," they said, "Cool!"
You see, sometimes you can not always tell what will capture the children's imagination.