Aotearoa

Good afternoon. I’m now in windy Wellington, have been since Saturday but, for completeness, I’ll briefly mention what has been happening in the past week or so.

Got into Auckland some time on Monday morning (last week) and we were met by Abby the local IEP person who then took us on a brief tour of one of Auckland’s 7 or so volcanoes. It was a bit of a culture shock at first, certainly compared to the pure heat and humidity of Hong Kong, Auckland was cold and windy. Anyway, we all took some photos of Auckland from our volcano view and then hurried back into the bus. Then we got into Auckland Central Backpackers and tried to ‘power nap’ ( © Mark ) but that didn’t work out too well so we wandered round for a bit. We went out on Monday night, ended up in an Irish bar called Father Ted’s where myself, Matt and Mark were enrolled in a killer pool competition with half a dozen or so of the locals. I wasn’t really sure what was happening but at least I didn’t disgrace myself in the competition. Then we went back to the basement bar next to the hostel for a few drinks and met more of the locals.

On Tuesday morning, I went on a Kiwi Experience tour of Auckland with Mark, Izzy, Charlene and Keely (I think that was all who went) and we picked up some other people at different hostels, so I think they’d have been about 17 or so in total on the tour, different nationalities for that cosmopolitan feel. I can’t really remember the order of events but we went to the Auckland Harbour Bridge, were supplied with helmets and security rope things and then proceeded to climb this 40 metre bridge. It was a lot of fun, it got better when I told Mark to have a look down and then we saw the rushing water flow beneath our feet through the walkway. At the top there was a pod thing (climbing the ladders to it wasn’t that much fun, I have to admit) and one of the girls on the tour decided she’d do a bungy of it – I think she enjoyed it. We climbed back down after that, had a bit of a sit down in the reception area and then it was back on the bus.

Next was a place called North Head, a kind of military fortress gun placement building that was designed to defend against a Russian invasion in the late nineteenth century. Unfortunately, the building of this coincided with a huge gold rush in the South Island and so there were only about 40 old men and kids left to defend New Zealand against a possible Russian attack. In the end, only a single Russian ship came to Auckland, had a bit of a look round and then quickly left. In the 1980s they fired the gun at North Head (it’s the biggest in New Zealand) just to see if it actually worked but the blast from the gun shattered loads of people’s windows in the area and now they’re never allowed to fire it again! Our tour guide was quite funny, he was joking about the state of New Zealand’s army and he said that if the country ever fully mobilised for a full scale war, they’d have enough ammunition to last for about 7 minutes. Good to know.

After that we went for some feesh and cheeps off a guy affectionately known as the Angry Croatian. He was in a good mood when we got there and the chips were nice but salty. When we got back into the city, we drove past an Alcoholics Anonymous office which is next door to an off licence. Genius.

Nothing much was done for the rest of the week, just some banking stuff and more wandering around, I think it took us a while to get fully over all the flying.

I went to see Snow Patrol on the Friday night with Keely at the Vector Arena, if that’s what it’s called. It was a good gig, one of the support guys was called Iain Archer and I recommend him highly.

I’m not sure what else happened in Auckland, I can’t remember but anyway, we’re in Wellington now and the details of that can wait for another day. Should be off to see the mighty Wellington Phoenix play against the equally impressive Adelaide Utd on Saturday with Mark at the Cake Tin.

Sweet as, bro.