Auckland!

---

My plane got in around 1pm, and it was extremely nice to get out of that flying metal tube and stretch my legs. My first stop: the water fountain to refill my water bottle and begin the reconstitution process that must come after long international flights. I was happy to see a special spout for water bottles on the water fountain - so nice! Second stop: the currency exchange to get some New Zealand moolah. Traveling protip: using google to translate currency will lead you down a sad path when you exchange your money for real. When I looked at the exchange rate online, a New Zealand dollar was worth about 0.80 US dollars. But my 200 American dollars only got me 217 NZD from the exchangers. Ouch. Looks like peanut butter and saltines is on the menu this whole trip. With those preliminaries finished (and of course the requisite toilet stop), it was time for customs.



Here's what you need to know about NZ customs: biosecurity is huge. It means no fruit, no veggies, no milk powder, no honey, nothing processed from meat, no mud on your hiking boots and many other things. I declared my small folding knife and prescriptions, they didn't even make me show them. But my hiking boots warranted a glance to see if they needed to clean some mud off them for me (They didn't. I've not taken them on a serious tramp yet.). An airport officer had a young black lab on a leash and was sniffing a lady's bag in front of me. Michelle told me later, but this was not your usual bomb-sniffing dog. Nope, this was a fruit-sniffing dog. No joke.



So, bag is claimed, customs is cleared, there is nothing left but to exit the airport! As I walk out the gate I see a crush of people and I try not to panic. How am I supposed to find Ben Strickland, one of my two hosts that evening, in this crowd? Michelle told me a 6' tall redhead and said there wasn't many of them in NZ but I'm still concerned. And I didn't send them a photo of me or ask for one! Stupid mistake! Luckily, I saw a 6' tall redhead making their way through the crowd to meet me, so nothing disastrous happened! Turns out they had done their homework (unlike me) and found some of my photos on facebook before picking me up. Silly silly me.



We made three stops on the way to their place. The first was Ollie's a sandwich/ice cream shop, where they treated me to my very first taste of hokey pokey ice cream. IT IS AMAZING. It's vanilla ice cream, and they put chunks of hokey pokey in it. Hokey pokey is a sort of candy, I had some later that day, it's like caramel styrofoam almost, but not really. Put it in ice cream and it goes from tasty to HOLY CRAP SO DELICIOUS GONNA DIE. Supergood, I tell you.



The second stop was One Tree Hill, which is a park/obelisk/hill that overlooks he city. It doesn't actually have a tree on it, apparently some protestors damaged it and it eventually died. But it has a large obelisk on it dedicated to...someone. I probably should have checked but I was a bit out of it. The view was great, though!



Third stop was a supermarket so that I could pick up some food. I chose to get food outside of peanut butter and saltines, instead opting for apples, oranges, beef jerky, and these bars called One Square Meal (two bars is supposed to be able to replace a meal). Oh, I also bought scroggin (i.e., trail mix). Hopefully these will tide me over for a few days!



Once we got to their place, I showered and we sorted out where I was going to sleep the next two days. I had thought to sleep in Otorohanga (oh-tro-HAN-ga, hard or soft "r" is acceptable), but it turns out there aren't any backpackers (i.e., hostels) in Otorohanga. There are, however, several in Waitomo (a nearby city and the center of the glowworm cave action) so we found a spot for me there over Skype-phone. So that all worked out lovely-like.



After that lovely escapade, Ben and Michelle took me to Piha beach! Oh, but first I need to introduce Ben and Michelle Strickland! Ben is the brother of Erin Strickland, with whom I ushered basketball games, and he has lived in NZ for 3 years. Michelle is his wife, a native kiwi, born and raised in Auckland. They are both schoolteachers, and I remember that Ben teaches English but I can't remember if Michelle teaches a specific subject. They are renting a lovely 1-bedroom floor beneath a house and lent me the foldout bed for the evening.



So, Piha beach. It was great! Apparently it's a world-class surfspot, though there weren't many surfers out that day nor were the waves great. The wind was onshore, coming in from the ocean, which apparently makes the waves crash faster. The sand was black from iron, and apparently the rip tides are strong so they recommend you swim only when the lifesavers (i.e., lifeguards) are on duty, and only between the flags they set up. Ben and Michelle went for a dip, but I had forgotten to wear my suit so I just enjoyed digging my toes in the sand. We then climbed Partway up Lion Rock, a huge rock island sitting in the center of the beach. Then it was time to run over to Michelle's Dad's place for a Boxing Day dinner! (Incidentally, kiwis get both Christmas and Boxing Day off. Actually they get a lot of time off in general. Like four weeks a year or something. Very jealous.)



Dinner at Michelle's Dad Graem's (sp?) house featured him, his sister Dell (short for Adell), her husband Ron, Graem's mom Nan (I didn't catch her name) and teenager Matthew (forgot to ask how he was related....) It was very nice, Graem works as a flight attendant in first/business class so he was a great host, we had turkey, ham, salad, boiled potatoes, cranberry sauce, steak, and I had two glasses of Pinot Gris that made my jetlagged head spin but they were so delicious I regretted nothing. We finished the meal off with Christmas pudding (kind of like a run and raisin cake thing) with ice cream and cream (i.e., whipped cream). Everyone was really friendly and we had great and fun conversation. :D



This evening was very interesting because there were a several differences between them and an average American family. First, everyone ate the French way, with an upside down fork in the left and a knife in the right, except for dessert, which could be eaten with a righthand fork, and when you were done you placed the fork and knife parallel and diagonal across the plate from the upper left. It was an interesting manners exercise for me! Second difference: I was amazed at how much this family knew about political and legislative occurrences not only within New Zealand but around the world. They discussed a new law in China, housing laws in Auckland, immigration, so many things that I'm not used to hearing discussed commonly. Matthew also displayed an amazing breadth of knowledge, to the point where I think he'd be the king of Jeopardy if he played. It was an interesting experience,and made me wonder how these people could know so much. What is it that they're doing right?



After dinner it was back to Ben and Michelle's place for my first encounter with a bed in almost 48 hours. I slept like a dead person, waking up in exactly the same position in which I fell asleep. Then it was time to move on, which is in my next post.



Miscellaneous notes: housing in Auckland in crazy expensive, lots of people want to live there but they want parcels of land and not apartments so the city is trying to grow out and not up but it probably can't really, the roads through preserves are often incredibly windy so drive slow, phoning outside of your area is like an international call so people try to use skype for those sorts of things, there is news on every radio station on the hour, the preferred footwear is jandals (i.e., flipflops), cards need to yield to pedestrians in zebra crossing (striped crosswalks), prices are rounded to nearest 0.10 and include tax, they have coins for 2 and 1 NZD

---