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Published: November 16th 2009
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First night
See how people just flock to me? So today I ship out of Auckland. Good thing too, I'm not really feeling it here. I think it's too much like Portsmouth - the tower, the water, etc for me to really feel like I'm away from home. It does, however, have an IMAX cinema so I got to see A Christmas Carol in 3D on the biggest cinema screen I've ever sat in front of so that was cool.
So what have we done? Well, essentially I've been drunk for a week while I try and figure out what the hell I'm doing here and trying to forget my original reasons for buying the ticket in the first place. I've managed to get some good tourist action in though and that's involved lots of walking.
First thing we did was hit up the Aquarium and I'll be putting some photos on here, just as soon as I figure that out. It was a pretty cool Aquarium with a penguin enclosure and part of it was some water maintained at the same temperature the penguins were swimming in, with a challenge to keep your hand in for 30 secs.
I put my hand in and the first 10
secs were fine, at the 12th I started to think it was quite cold, by the 20th I was beginning to wonder if I'd survive the final 10,by the time I yanked my hand out on the 30 sec mark it was completely numb, but I was quite pleased to have kept it in for 30secs. That is until another guy rocked up and told me about going scuba diving or something and he'd had water that cold on his lips for about 45mins. Show off.
After that we decided to head on up the infamous Sky tower which was pretty cool, but it was a cloudy day so there was a limit to how much we could see. 2 things you can do up the tower - The Skywalk and The Skyjump. The walk is a walk round the circumference of the tower 220 metres up on a 1.5 metre wide walkway with the city below you. The jump is....well, my hands are getting sweaty just thinking about it....Essentially, you strap up and make a 200 metre odd controlled freefall. It's quite uneasy looking out the window of a very high tower to see someone go past it,
Stingray
Ugliest fish ever... arms flailing.
I also managed to get Auckland Zoo which was pretty cool, but not really worth writing about - you know what happens at zoos.
We also took a couple of treks up the hills and first went up Mount Eden an extinct volcano just outside the city, which we managed to do on the only sunny day there's been since I got here, so got some great views. We also so the Googlemaps car so expect some street views to come soon 😊
The other hill is called One Tree Hill which has nothing to do with the TV show and doesn't have any trees on it, just some big column thing which I probably could have talked about were it not for the fact that when I got to the top I just wanted to sit down and go back down out of the howling wind that had appeared from nowhere.
That's essentially all I've done in Auckland apart from apply for my tax number, open a bank account, have a nightmare trying to put money in it then there was the hilarious incident where I lost my credit card PIN number...
I've played
some poker because there is a competition every night to win some cash and it's free to enter, unfortunately I only discovered it 2 nights ago.
Oh get this - so last night I met a scummer, I've walked past someone in a Southsea Bronx tshirt (I don't really know what Southsea Bronx is, but you only have one of those tshirts if you're from southsea I know that much) and one of the guys who added me on Facebook through the real gap thing months ago turned out to be in the room next to me!
I got pressured into going to the Toga night last night and it was Karaoke too. Obviously I didn't need the offer of a free drink for anyone who sings, but it was quite an ego boost to not only pull off a Tom Jones number but have a Welsh guy compliment me on it too.
OK, I've gotta say it - I don't normally blow my own trumpet and really mean it, but I wiped the floor with everyone last night. Turns out I can sing a bit.
One thing I've noticed here is that fizzy drinks in shops come
in much bigger sizes - bottles are 660ml instead of 500. I don't know why that is, but at least they last longer 😊
My MP3 player is being a knobend and so despite the fact that I can plug it into a computer and see all my 3000ish tunes, I can only actually listen to 500and-something. It was 765 but I appear to have made a boo-boo when I was trying to sort it out and I'm now sitting here listening to Vampire Weekend on www.we7.com coz I can't be bothered fishing out the player only to find disappoint...So who wants to zip up some MP3's and email them to me?
So what's next? Well in 90 mins time I'm shipping out on a bus to Thames which is about 90mins from here actually where I will be working in Sunkist Backpackers for either 3 hours a day, 7 days a week or 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. I won't get paid but I'll stay there for free, so I'll try and find an additional bar job or something. The email said I'd be paid in accommodation "and a few other bits" - I
don't know what they are but free car hire would be good so I can go exploring. Not sure how long I'll stay, think there was a 3 week minimum. Dependant on cash I may duck down to Rotorua and check out some Zorbing and that luge thing, then I gotta come back to crappy Auckland on 22 December, ready for my bus to Bay of Islands on 23 December and hopefully catch up with a few peeps there as a lot of guys I've spoken to seemed to like the idea of Xmas up there, so we'll see what happens.
I've tried to add a map on here with a guesstimated bus route so you get an idea where I'll be going and I'll try and maintain it while I'm out here.
Right I'm off to rehydrate myself after last night's 11 hour drinkathon.
I really need to avoid young people in hostels ha ha!!!
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