First Days and Time Travel

Today was unnecessarily long, and so this post will be unnecessarily long, as it will encompass my plane flight and my first day in New Zealand.

The flight did not seem too bad, although the plane seemed as if it was too large to ever possibly take off. The ride was very smooth and we had almost no turbulence. There were a lot of movies and tv episodes to keep us entertained, the seats were a decent size, and I had an aisle seat near the front of the plane. The guy in the seat next to me was a very friendly Aucklander who spoke to me a lot, but thankfully ended up falling asleep and not keeping me awake. I was pretty sure that I had only slept three hours, but considering that the flight didn’t feel like it took very long I’m sure I drifted off for longer than that.

Also, I ceased to exist for July 1^st. It was very interesting that we were traveling to the west, so we left during the night and kept following the sunset and were in the dark the entire time.

I felt very accomplished when we finally arrived, even though I did little actual work to get here. It's just that it's so far away, and then things are even crazier when you get here and it's kind of like Europe. So that was my uneventful plane ride. Waiting to get my passport stamped took a while, and then I had to show customs my hiking boots for some reason, but everything went smoothly. On the shuttle to the hostel I sat behind a couple from Adelaide, and they kept trying to talk to me about it, but although at first I was feeling very alert I found myself nodding off.

The hostel is very nice. There are a lot of people here. I ended up in this four person room currently occupied by another girl whom I haven’t met yet and two guys from Austria who are finishing up a trip around the world. One of them is unnaturally tall. We have bunk beds, and he can just arrange stuff on his top bed without climbing up there or standing on his toes or anything. They are leaving tomorrow, though, so I will have new roommates probably by the time you read this.

The owner is sweet, as well, although apparently I have to cook dinner for the hostel on Wednesday night. I told him that that may be a problem for anyone who has to eat whatever I make. Does anyone have any ideas for something that is easy/cheap to throw together? I can make angel hair pasta with chicken and basil and tomatoes, and that is pretty much it.

It was raining when the plane landed and I was awake, so I figured I would go to the Auckland Museum today. However, by the time we got to the hostel, the sun was out and so I decided to check out downtown Auckland.

Auckland reminds me both of New York and downtown San Diego at the same time. Also, Europe. It is very busy (although I concede not on the scale of NY), but it has the harbor that you can see from pretty much anywhere. It also has the Sky Tower, which is apparently the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere? I don’t know if that’s true, but it is really tall. It is so tall, in fact, and so in the middle of the city that you would think I would be able to not lose it. You would be wrong. I looked up at the skyline and suddenly couldn’t find it anywhere. Eventually, I did find it again, and it turns out that I had been below it the whole time. I went up to the top, where I found out you could actually bungee jump off the very top, which is ridiculous. I opted not to, as I only have one good pair of pants and I would prefer them stay in good condition, but it turns out that the people who bungee jump fall right past the observation window, which is almost as bad.

ALSO, the floor was made of glass. It was terribly frightening. I was also not encouraged by the bullseye that someone had hilariously thought to put down below us.

Regardless, I got some nice pictures. Auckland is a nice city; it has a lot of parks, a beautiful harbor, and lots of surrounding volcanoes and islands. Sorry for the quality; it was taken through glass.

It feels much later than it actually is. Apparently it’s only 3 in the afternoon, but I feel like it’s very late in the evening. I have done very well by not sleeping, although I did have a scary moment where I nodded off on the bus and almost missed my stop. I may give in and take a nap, wake up to have dinner, and go back to sleep. That sounds like a good idea for today.

Tomorrow I will either go to the zoo or the Auckland Museum, and I am going to try and fit in day trips to Rangitoto and Tiritiri islands, one of which is a hike on a dormant volcano (with side paths to lava caves) and the other a bird sanctuary, I have canyoning on Saturday, and I want to try and make it south to the glowworm caves and east to Rotorua and the LotR set. I may turn this into a two day trip. Even with that, I still have like four days left (my flight leaves July 13 at 8 in the morning). I have no idea how I’m going to fill them. I may look into going to Devonport and this other island as well (that’s two more days), and I may also do whale watching/a day visiting the Auckland Art Gallery and One Tree Hill. Hmmmm.

You don't know that time has passed, but it has! I slept for about two hours and now I'm not all that sleepy, oops. It's only 7, but it started raining again so I'm not sure I'm going to leave again tonight.

So anyway I woke up at around five and decided it would be a really good idea to go shopping. The supermarket is about a ten minute walk down a hill, and at the top there is a really good view of the Auckland skyline. I have to say that the Sky Tower (I keep wanting to type the Space Needle) is quite impressive and futuristic looking all lit up. When I left, the night was very clear and cool and wonderful. Speaking of which, the temperature has been nice and cool, but not too cold, except near the harbor, where it is windy.

The supermarket had a lot of weird things in it, most notably about fifty varieties of yams. Apparently the Maoris really like yams.

OKAY something really exciting just happened so I'm going to cut this boring play-by-play of me buying groceries short and tell you about it in the next post!