New Zealand has a fairly small but progressive and proactive gay culture , and Auckland, the most vibrant of the cities, is at its centre. The two-week Hero Festival has traditionally taken place in February with a Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and a number of other events leading up to the climactic Hero Parade . Ponsonby Road is closed off for the Saturday night and tens of thousands - gay, straight and voyeuristic party animals alike - line the streets to egg on the lavish floats. Unfortunately, the community's reverential nod to Sydney's Mardi Gras stumbles financially from one year to the next and the 2000 festival was called off.

There's a heap of information about what's happening in the fortnightly Express magazine ($2.50; gaynz.com/express ), which can be bought from branches of Maggazzino and the Out! bookshop (tel 09/377 7770; 45 Anzac Ave), and is available for browsing in many cafés. It's also worth tuning in to Round the Bend , the Sunday evening gay and lesbian interest programme (8-9pm) on 95BFM ( www.95bfm.co.nz ), preceded by an hour of The Girls Own Show . Look out too for Queer Nation , sporadically on TV2 at 11pm.

Outside of festival time, the gay scene is fairly low-key, gently woven into the café/bar mainstream of Ponsonby, Parnell and Newmarket, with the exception of the western end of K' Road where the strip clubs mingle freely with gay bars and cruise clubs. Among the cafés , Atlas Power Café in Ponsonby attracts a significant gay clientele, and, in the same area, the intimate and friendly Surrender Dorothy , 175 Ponsonby Rd, is great for a quiet drink, though it isn't exclusively gay. Almost all the significant gay action happens along a short section of K' Road, where Legend , 335 K' Rd (tel 09/377 6062; open nightly) and Sinners , 373 K' Rd (tel 09/308 9985; Wed-Sat only; www.sinners.co.nz ) are two of the hottest clubs , both open late and often hosting live drag acts or other entertainment.