On-the-Road Tales

I left Tahiti just after midnight on a Thursday and arrived in Auckland, NZ on Friday morning. I would have gone on thinking it was Thursday had I not overheard someone discussing the oddness of losing a day. Que? Oh yeah, International Date Line. Forgot about that, since I am not going back the same way I am all concerned about this loss of a whole day. Next round the world trip I am going to go the opposite direction to make up for lost time!

I passed through immigration and immediately fell in love with NZ with what I saw next – they had a free tea and coffee welcome station in the baggae claim!! I was getting to get on good in this country. They are wicked strict with customs, ie making sure you do not import any bad things into their country so I was grilled about fruits, foods and contact with livestock. They examined my Easter Island hiking shoes for environmental biohazard and then let me through after another scan. They had a tourism office in the airport which was open, had friendly staff and free phones to ring and book the hostels. I was gobsmacked at the ease of it all. I would look around when I heard someone speaking English since I had been doing that for 3 months but alas I quickly realized – everyone speaks English here, strange getting reaccustomed to your native tongue.

I picked up the phone and started ringing hostels asking thee primary question – Do you have laundry facilities? First one that sad yes, I hopped the bus downtown to. I had my first dorm in Tahiti but noone ever showed up to share it – it was fun while it lasted but privacy was about to become a distant memory. I checked into Albert Street Backpackers at 0830 and found 6 out of the 7 beds stocked with sleeping people and the room strewn with the contents of overflowing rucksacks. It has been a good 10 years since I Eurailed around Europe so I had to get back used to this lifestyle again. I threw my stuff down and went out, not willing to start crinkling bags to sort laundry and upsetting the bunkmates right off the bat.

I stopped next door to the travel agent and informed him I had 21 days in NZ and I wanted to see it all. I thought alloting 3 weeks for NZ would be plenty but he chastised me for the inadequate timespan. I could swing most of the country but would have to leave out extreme north, south, east, and various islands. I could live with that. I bought a hop on-hop off bus pass on ‘Kiwi Experience’ that covered, in 20 days, a majority of the North Island and South Island and a flight to get me back up north in time for my flight to Thailand.

I was not going to have time to see Auckland properly since I suddenly had a schedule and was leaving in the morning but one thing I wanted to do was the Harbour Bridge walk. You strap yourself to the side of a bridge and walk up the structure above traffic and water – sounded so cool and forbidden. Imagine being able to scale the Verrazano Narrows with a guide? Despite being on 3 hours airplane sleep, and it starting to drizzle I set out to make a booking – fortunetly for me probably, they had not availability left for the day so that experience will have to wait. I would quickly realize things deemed illegal and prosecuted in other countries are tolerated and even encouraged here in NZ. They allow you to walk above traffic on bridges, they have a bungy jump off the same commuter bridge and well as off a skyscraper in the middle of downtown, they have giant spring swing on the sidewalks and the list goes on. They are complete adhrenline (not knowing how to spell that word. i know my spelling looks like it sucks but it is usually my lack of typing prowess, sucky keyboards, and lack of patience to proofread posts) anyway adrenehlin (?not right either haha ) junkies. anything goes.

Noteworthy achievement of the day – Clean laundry!!!

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 3:58 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.