Auckland, New Zealand is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. It has the excitement of a city with the relaxation of a Caribbean island. The city itself has everything you could ever need, great shopping, some sketchy Chinese or Thai massage parlor on a few corners, not to mention is the hub of the financial district. If you take a short ferry ride to various islands you get a remote atmosphere with beautiful beaches.. kind of like a Cayman Islands feel. When we first arrived to the city, it was about 2am and we were all exhausted. The next day we went on a boat ride around the Bay Area where they explained the history of the city. I got burned. Again. Then we briefly docked at an island and had sometime to walk around. As I was walking down this lava path with my aunt we met this lovely New Zealander and whose family lived on this island for over 100 years, and every morning he wakes up, goes down to the rocks, fishes, catches something, then smokes the fish, then sweeps his driveway where we met him. I've always debated whether I'd like to live a remote life like that, sort of off the grid, or if I have to always have to have something to do.. I think if I lived a life like his I'd get bored in a weeks time and have to move to a city, but this man's lifestyle was interesting.
So then it was time to get back on the boat and finish the harbor cruise, or whatever. But we realized as the boat was pulling away that my brother didn't board. As the boat slowly left the dock, we saw Marc standing at the dock, stranded on this little island with no money and no ticket back to the port for any other boats. Whoopsy. Luckily my dad was able to talk to the girl who worked on the boat to allow my brother onto the next boat that would leave an hour and a half later. I guess that's what happens when you don't follow directions, you get stranded on some random island and forced to smoke and catch fish all day.
While Marc was stranded, the rest of the crew and I decided to grab a quick lunch, then head to the island Waiheke where my roommate Christine lived for about a year in between undergrad and graduate school. At lunch we ran into a bit of a debacle. My mother the vegetarian for 30+ years ordered a veggie sandwich but without mushrooms because she is allergic. The sandwich comes, everyone is eating blahblahblah... she's eating mushrooms, and no one has an epi-pen. So basically we are waiting for her to just collapse and die, or something cause no one but me seemed too concerned about it. I kept staring her down and waiting for something to happen AND NOTHING DID. Good news world, the mushrooms allergy was a lie, now I can stop being a mushroom nazi and hardcore inspecting everything before my mother eats it. DREAM.
Anyways, we headed to Waiheke. One thing I've noticed about New Zealanders is that they love their mullets, rat tails, lack of deodorant, and tribal tattoos. The hair styles are ridiculous, like every other person has either a mullet of some sort of rats tail or messy hair bleach job. They also smell terrible, which is especially uncomfortable when you're on a bus and some public bus and there's a smelly man sitting practically on top of you with the window open and his arm propped up on the window sill with his body odor wafting straight into your eyes burning them as well as your nose and mouth, so bad that you take taste it (this has happened multiple times). And then there's the tribal tats. I'm sorry, what English/European tribe are you from? I asked one guy what his tattoo meant, and he said it's something in someone's native language with import shapes that represent something.. Now, don't you think you should know what your tribal tat means for that tribe before you get it on your body permanently? I see it as a form of neo- imperialism, a new hipster way to offend the indigenous cultures, just get something random tattooed on you. So anyways, those were my observations from the boat ride and traveling around the island. On the island we visited the place where Christine worked and walked around. I tried to buy a glass of wine from the island vineyards, but they didn't accept my drivers license and apparently I look under 18. Although finally I convinced the lady at the bar and tried some rose wine that was made there, which was great. I wanted to buy a bottle but we had to head back to the ferry and go back to Auckland.
When we arrived at the dock, my brother was there waiting for us, safe and returned from the isolated island. In New Zealand they have this special honey called manuka honey made by bees from the pollen and venom of the manuka plant and it has antibacterial and healing agents thats help people get better. Unfortunately since I'm allergic to bees and it's made with part bee venom, I couldn't try the product, but other members of my family did and purchased some to take home and hopefully get past US customs. Following the light shopping we headed to the hotel and went to dinner at the sky tower thing (a really tall tower that allows you to see all of Auckland) then retired for the night.
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6 am wakeup calls are getting extremely old, and my whole family has a cold but me and my father, aaaand I'll probably be the next to fall. Can't wait! Today we were headed to Rotorua, which is known for their hot springs, mud baths, and glow worms. Day one: glow worms. Gross. When I think glow worms, I think of that pointless uncuddley toy I had growing up that was like a stuffed baby doll with a plastic head that lit up, like a nightlight.. and it used to get hot because it basically had a light bulb in it.. who decided that was safe for kids to play/sleep with? Anyways, surprisingly, that is not what they are. Instead they aren't really worms at all, they just look like mosquitos and they have a sticky web-like substance they release that hangs down from the ceiling of the cave and it glows in the dark and look like a worm, I guess hence the name glow worm. So we're wandering all over the cave, the tour guide makes us sing jingle bells in the cave to demonstrate the acoustics, and then we reach a boat. Now we are boating in the cave with the worms or whatever hanging all in my face in the complete darkness. We sat in that boat for about 20 minutes. Like 5 minutes was enough for me to get the picture of how a glow worm functions and the life cycle, REALLY didn't need anymore. Finally the boat ride was over and we landed right into a gift shop, just like Disney World.
We made it to Rotorua and went on this weird cultural experience tour where people pretended to be Mawahi natives and show us how they lived. Super similar to the colonial tours in the 5th grade. I don't even want to begin to explain this thing, because it would take too long and it's not interesting, and according to my mother I'm cynical, so I'll spare you. Basically after that we went to the hotel to prepare for ANOTHER 6am wake up call.
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So the plan for today was to go to some agriculture dome, where there would be sheep and cows and various other farm life. My family decided to skip out on that because honestly, if we wanted to see a cow, we can just walk to the end of the street and observe them in there. Instead we went to the mud baths and hot springs to do a spa-like morning at a place called Hell's Gate. I think so far this was my favorite part of the trip, the mud bath was so fun and relaxing that afterwards I fell asleep for a few hours. We met up with the rest of the tour at the airport in order to fly to Christchurch which is a city that was recently devastated by a series of earthquakes in early 2011. The city was pretty depressing. All the old buildings were either destroyed by the earthquakes, or deemed unsafe and taken down by the New Zealand government. We would be driving and then we would see empty lots with no plans to put up a new structure. We then visited the main shopping district, or what used to be the main shopping district, and saw how they converted the shops into shipping containers, which was kind of cool. Since it was Christmas Eve, there was no one out except for homeless people that were singing Christmas carols, which made it even more depressing. The hotel was by the airport, since all the main hotels in town were destroyed by the earthquakes, so there wasn't really much exploring to do. So we all went to the bar and sat around with some drinks and enjoyed each other's company. It didn't really feel like Christmas Eve, except for the Christmas music. It was too hot outside and there were barely any decorations in the hotel. SUPER depressing. Well anyways, the younger folk hung out at the bar for a little longer afterwards and then we all went to sleep. I feel like this day was kind of boring. Sorry if that bored you half to death.
Updated: Christmas Day!
Franz Josef! I'm certain I slept through the explanation of who exactly is Franz Josef or if he is a real person at all, but that was the destination of the day. Of course we had to wake up early and sit on a bus for hours, and our first stop was at a jade factory. The prices were crazy. If I'm spending $300 on a necklace it better have some sort of precious stone in it, and not some shiny green rock. Also, all the styles were tribal. Like arrow heads and spirals and symbols that mean courage or whatever.. or you could get a kiwi bird figure..lovely. Then we went to find lunch somewhere in the ghost town we were in.. but since it was Christmas, obviously nothing was open except for this one restaurant, which was hosting a private party. The little cafe thing offered to sell sandwiches to us, but there weren't enough for everyone, so it was like a mad and violent dash to grab a sandwich before they were all out. After all the sandwiches were gone everyone who didn't get one was shit out of luck, so we began storming the streets looking for food. Kind of like zombies. The only restaurant that was open was an Indian place and some settled and ate there. Personally, Indian food isn't to my taste, so I set off looking for the beach, since the town we were at is on the Tasman Sea. The beach was cold, but it was awesome. I wish we have enough time to like sit there and picnic or something, but we had to leave. We drove past some scenes from The Lord of Rings movies. I didn't recognize them though, since I could never actually sit through the whole movie, but maybe now I'll watch it, since I've been to some of the places that it was filmed.
We then went to the Franz Josef glacier, however we were not allowed to get very close, since it has been melting and the park rangers have deemed it unsafe, or something. We hiked as far and we were allowed and it was completely beautiful, really a shame that it's melting away. We went back to the hotel where they prepared Christmas Dinner for us. It wasn't really the same as having a Christmas at home, but it would do. I felt bad for the people who had to work that night, they should have been at home with their families. Hopefully they made overtime. After dinner I was feeling like I was going to be the next to fall to the illness spreading through my family, so I just went to rest, while the rest of the crew went to go see more glow worms. I was also sick of glow worms, and worms in general. Once it started to pour outside they all came back all ranting and raving about how cool glow worms are... they aren't even worms.. only their web looks like a worm..
Updated:
100% sick. That's it. I fell to the plague. The next one to drop. Aside from the anticipation of the lovely 8 hour bus ride into Queenstown today, I had high hopes. We drove a lot around mountains, everyone was getting carsick. We stopped a few times to look at some small waterfalls and huge lakes, while I was pleasantly running a fever in the back of the bus. I felt bad for the group. I'm such a tyrant when I'm sick, and all I wanted to do was sleep. We finally got to the hotel at around 5pm and I pretty much went to sleep. LET'S HOPE THIS FEVER BREAKS TOMORROW, for everyone's sake.
Oh, and kiwi birds do have wings, but they can't really fly. FUN FACT.
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