You have to be especially cheap to get to a weekend market before 7am. My alarm woke me at 5:50am… Time for market!

I have been living in Auckland for over two years and had not once made it to the famous Otara Market. I pride myself on doing all that wanky Jamie Oliver stuff so this little oversight was a source of some guilt, especially as I had recommended it highly in an article for a travel magazine last year.

So I asked some people at work if they had ever been. One had. One out of twelve. Here are the reasons why:

1. It is South Auckland the way Antarctica is South Auckland. Very south.
2. If you are not there before 7am you will not get a park and all the good stuff is gone.
3. Once you have parked your car there is a one in three chance it will not be there when you get back. Or at least your stereo will not be there.
4. Some confusion as to whether Otara is a real place or just a fantasy made up to scare white people.

And so with the sun rising over my affluent, inner-city suburb of Mt Eden we piled into the car (it’s insured for theft and I want a new one so maybe I’d get lucky…) and hit the Southern Motorway. The scenery changed from big old homes to small new homes to industrial to carcinogenic power cables and finally to ghetto. We had arrived.

After jamming everything of value from the car into my pockets (there was still room to spare) we hit the markets. The timing was perfect. The Otara markets are the largest Polynesian markets in the world, owing to the fact that Auckland is the largest Polynesian city in the world. We were there as many of the stalls were just finishing their set up, so the air was filled with freshly baked Cook Island donuts, rewa rewa bread, market vegetables and some sort of unidentified dung. We did a quick scout of all the stalls and then got down to the business of buying things… Seemingly at random.

I bought thirty pairs of socks for thirty dollars, a kilo of Maori potatoes (they are small, purple and funny shaped) and a pink taro that I do not know how to cook. I thought long and hard about the stolen toy light sabers, the broken laptop bag and the big bunches of what was probably coriander. I rifled through the aggressively evangelical screen-printed T shirts (“no prayer is too small for Jesus”, “surrender to the Lord”) but they had not discounted this season’s lines yet so I held off.

It was then I met my match -possibly the oldest Niuean woman in the tiny island country’s history. We locked horns in a high-stakes battle of wits across the market over the price of baked goods. She was selling freshly baked Niuean coconut bread and muffins. There was no part of that crudely drawn sign I didn’t like… Except for the conspicuous absence of the price. I had just broken my second twenty on another ten pairs of socks so the smallest note I had was a ten dollar bill. She takes my ten dollar bill and hands over my bread and muffins. I stand expectantly by her baskets, waiting for change. She cocks her head to the side and stares quizzically at me. I ask how much my purchase was. She responds slowly in the tone of voice you would use when teaching retards to swim. Ten dollars. I sigh. The lady before me had paid less than five.

Clutching our purchases we return to our unmolested car. (Dammit!) It was 7:40am. We could make it to one of my favourite trendy cafes just as it would be opening, thereby guaranteeing ourselves a good seat outside. So we drove back to our inner city haunt and got a park right outside the café. (If you know Ponsonby Road then you know why this is worth mentioning.)

I order scrambled eggs, sausages and a couple of coffees. Twenty bucks. We sit outside and watch the street. In contrast to Otara, which was sunny and quiet, Ponsonby is foggy and damp. Auckland really is two very different cities. I am appalled I paid ten dollars for coconut bread and a dozen muffins but do not blink when I hand over double that for some eggs and coffee. Yes, I had this all backwards. I should be grateful I only paid ten dollars for the coconut bread. It is authentic, it is honest, it is the real deal. And I love coconut bread. Haven’t had decent coconut bread in years. It really reminds me of all our childhood holidays in the Pacific. In fact, I can’t wait to get home, heat it up, cover it in melted butter and get into it. We finish our coffees and get in the car.

Let me just say that I knew something was up with the coconut bread before it was even out of the oven. My suspicions were confirmed when I bit into it. There was nothing coconut about it. There was hardly anything fresh about it. That old Niuean witch had completely taken me for a ride. But hey, that’s the marketplace for you. You take some hits, you get some wins. It is all about portfolio buying. Baked goods turned out to be a bad investment this week but in the plus column my sock options have never looked better.