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Published: October 9th 2007
Auckland. What a shock to the system the last few days have been.
Getting here was awful. The biggest plane I have ever been on and also the most cramped. I was horribly uneasy for the whole flight and could barely move, let alone sleep. Ten hours of feeling like a battery hen, in fact I think I would have rather had the animals section of some dodgy single seater cargo plane in a cyclone. A few hours wait in sydney (ya little ripper!) and onto a smaller and very shakey plane for the last flight that I hope I will be taking for some time. Auckland airport is a joke, and not a funny one at that I might add. Firstly we (and about a thousand others) had to que for an hour to get through passport controll, only for me to find that STA travell had managed to put the wrong passport number down on my working holiday visa (thanks guys, no no, really...) so after a very long wait and a rather cute sniffer dog contemplating being interested in my bag, (well, it is a fantastic looking bag) I was allowed into the country. Like I wasnt already in it?!
Then there was the most shambles of an exit that I have ever seen. The airport was mobbed, I thought everyone queing in the hall was checking into their next flight, but no, several thousand people were queing to get out of the airport because in Auckland, some bright spark decided they need to xray your luggage after its been on the plane and after you collect it. (well done guys, so clever, no no, really... ) After about 2 hrs of snake like ques meandering from one end of the hall to the other, forming several oxbow lakes and many cross-cultural aggrevations about people jumping from one stream to the next, I finnaly get out. Now I was under the impression or understanding that there was a bus waiting for me to take me to the hostel, which there was, but it took me a further hour of trying to get my new global calling card to work (which it doesnt in most NZ payphones) to find out that it was just the standard service into town that awaited me. Thankfully the bus driver (who was my first experiance with meeting the Maori's and was absolutly massive, Jonah who?) was the kindest guy ever and dropped me right at the hostels door.
Bearring in mind at this point I have not slept for about 24hrs, I was tired, cross and bearly human. The hostel just about destroyed me. It was like walking through a time portal and I was back at uni, in the halls of residence. I was so deleriopusly tired in fact that I did begin to qustion time travell and parralell universes as I was sure I had crossed some kind of Event Horizon and stepped right into the pit of hell (Sam Niel would have been a welcomed surprise). The only differance this time was I had to share my box room with 4 strangers. It was a shock, but i managed to tell myself not to pass judgement on this crazy thing I was doing untill I had some rest. The problem being that I was overtired so had little choice but to go to the bar with Marvin, my German byciclist room mate. Finnally, after a grand total of 38hrs of chaos, I got to sleep. And I might add, the most comfortable feeling I can remember, my head hitting the pillow. Hell, that much sleep deprivation without the aid of any drugs, legal or not, must be quite close to some kind of record, certainly my personal best. But I probably could have slept on a bed of nails, inch deep in water, teeming with electric eals listening to the latest rendidtion of "lets blow our eardrums off by hugging the speakers" session of aphrodities greates noises.
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John Mace
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Winging Git!
Just testing your BOG page out, interesting story. Any fit ladies,or men for you? Things going well here, meeting up with Pat tomorrow, going shooting and watching That scum of the back of my throat England play South Africa, which should be fun fun fun! Hope all is well with you pal, speak soon J