Dipping our toe in New Zealand

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“You guys won’t want to leave once you walk out that door” The Kiwi customs officer says this about his homeland completely matter of fact and deadpan. Mind you from what I’ve heard from buddies who have travelled around NZ before, it’s some spot.

The weather is gorgeous, yet they can go skiing after only a short island hop, they invented bungee jumping, they all love Rugby instead of soccer, Jesus was born here…in the church of Wally, Jesus is also known by his human name Peter Jackson and to cap it off 1.5% of the population list their religious beliefs as “Jedi”. Seriously, New Zealand is as awesome as Arnold schwarzenegger and all the legendary Hollywood action heroes taking part in a steer up to steer up cavalry charge…with tyrannosaurus Rexes as steeds.


We get in at Auckland airport at 4.30 Am, help ourselves to a McDonalds brekkie and book our accommodation via Wifi, where unlike south America, NZ charges you for its use every minute by pre paid ready to go cards, unless I’m willing to shell out I guess I wont be getting any further then V series 2 episode 5.

The airport shuttle bus dumps us off outside our hostel and within seconds we see our first Aucklanders, a very underdressed lady employed in the world oldest profession and her “agent” in the middle of what appears to be an industrial dispute, we moved swiftly onwards.

Booking into the hostel was a doddle, the cheeky kiwi on reception informed us that I was staying in dorm full of teetottling Americans while the only room available for blondie was a bunk in with the local rugby league team. Rugby League doesn’t have much of a following in Ireland but it’s huge in Oz and NZ. Bear in mind that Southern hemisphere rugby league player are well known for their off the pitch lifestyle which is comparable to that of the barbarian tribes that sacked Rome. Thankfully he was joking.

Our rooms weren’t ready until 2 am and Jetlag was taking its toll, especially as during the flight we broke the space time continuum and were currently a day ahead of Ireland and Chile, with Niamh already dozing on the hostel couch we decided to head to Auckland Zoo to keep ourselves awake. Auckland Zoo is up there with the Steve Irwin zoo and Bronx zoo as being one of the premier zoos in the world.

There’s nothing quite like a trip to the zoo, weather its teenagers inciting the monkeys to throw their poo, teaching the Parrot to utter swear words or laughing as concerned parents cover their children’s eyes when the seemingly innocent and slow turtles start strenuously carrying out the act that rabbits are more famous for, there really is something for everyone, The zoo itself is incredible, the enclosures are brilliant and the keepers consistently try to introduce new stimuli to the animals to keep them happy and alert. Ever go to the big cat enclosure and end up squinting at the bushes and not seeing a thing? Well in Auckland zoo the tigers are given a range of playthings to enjoy such as empty water kegs, when we got to the tiger enclosure one of them was out and about playing with his keg like a cat chasing a marble.

After our zoo adventures our batteries hit empty and we promptly stumbled back to the hostel and down the street for a bit of grub. Our end of Queen Street has dozens upon dozens of Chinese, Korean and Japanese eateries throughout and main courses go for about 3 or 4 Euro for a sit in meal. These are proper Asian eateries and when you have a look at some of the more “exotic” items on the menu it’s immediately apparent that they haven’t been dumbed down for the westerners. One absolutely mouth watering meal later for less then a 10er we trudged up the street to our hostel for 4.30 and promptly feel asleep until 5.30 Am the following morning.

Feeling refreshed we were up and tucking into wheetabix for brekkie, wheetabix being something I loved to eat as a child but unreasonably lost the taste for upon learning to talk. I don’t know what inspired me to indulge in it again, but it was nice to rediscover it, thankfully for the other hostel guests, I didn’t revive the old habits of pouring runny wheetabix over my head and throwing it across the kitchen from the high chair as photograph evidence in my parents attic attests.

Our afternoon plan was to visit the Auckland Museum, located in the Auckland Domain, one of the most beautiful parks I’ve ever strolled in. The museum is incredible, the first floor dealing with the history of the Kiwi people which included some amazing exhibits relating to the pacific islanders and a lot about the Islands Native Maoris’, whose wood carvings are possibly some of the most impressive examples of physical art I’ve ever seen. Interestingly enough for those of you, who use to give me grief about my Man bag back home , it turns out the New Guinea warriors used to carry man bags themselves, of course this was to enable them to carry their weapons ready at all times and not their lunchboxes! Other specimens of note were the Polynesian weapons that utilised sharks teeth, which included everything from short clubs, spears and garrottes fashioned with Jaw’s pointer assets.

Second floor was natural history, stuffed animals, replicas of sharks and a few decent dinosaur specimens but the third floor based on both world wars another high point with replicas of a spitfire and Japanese Zero. The War second dealt primarily with the exploits of the Australian and New Zealander troops in Wold War 1 and 2.

Australian and New Zealander soldiers or ANZAC troops as they were known had a reputation for being extremely brave soldiers and served with distinction in a number of campaigns during both world wars. I was most affected by the hall of memories, a long marble hall decorated by the names of New Zealanders killed in World War 2. This almanac of the fallen runs down one side of the building and nearly every surface of it hosts the name of a fallen soldier. Both myself and Niamh were on our own so the hall had a deathly silence to it that added to the poignancy, the only sounds being the quiet slap of our flip flops on the floor. While walking through all I could think was there were so many, considering New Zealand’s population is about the same as Irelands. I then read the small print that stated that these thousands of names did not represent the entire nation but only those who had died in the Auckland area, shocking stuff, no doubt there was hardly a family here that hadn’t had someone snatched from them on some foreign battlefield between 1939 and 1945.

Unfortunately, so lost in the exhibits we had lost all track of time we had to race through the last few displays to get out before closing time, all in all Auckland museum is definitely worth a few hours of your time.
Back at the hostel we began to cook up our dinner, it was 5.30 and we thought it best to use the cooking facilities before the kitchen got crowded a few hour later. The rules of the kitchen insist that every item of food is marked with a sticker containing your name, room number and date of departure so that everyone knows whose food is for whose. Niamh insisted we keep all the food that didn’t need to be refrigerated in our room, as it worked out this was a good call for a whole host of reasons. While I was fetching the Noodles another hostel guest decided to join Niamh in the kitchen. While his nationality remains a mystery, he was of average height and had the hair and eye colouration that made him perfect material for the recruitment poster for the German Fallschirmjager regiment during World War 2. He floated about the hostel peering at the larder and then looking timidly at the kitchen entrance and Niamh. When he was certain she wasn’t looking he began helping himself to choice foodstuffs belonging to other people thinking he was unobserved, this of course being an untrue assumption as women are scientifically proven to have greater peripheral vision then men especially Miss Power. Niamh while not looking directly at him could see everything he was doing. The funniest thing about this was he had obviously come down early to the kitchen expressly for the purpose of stealing other people’s food. Shortly after he was gone and had disposed of all the previous owners food labels in the reception bin so they wouldn’t be found as evidence, another person arrived in to do the exact same thing. We found this petty food pillaging to be a Kiwi Hostel phenomenon, while in South America the other hostel guests will gladly help themselves to your backpack when your back it turned they draw the line at pilfering your pasta!

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Photos

The meercat tunnels
ANDREWWW are these tunnels earthquake proof?

Auckland Domain
Nice spot for a picnic