Auckland has a nice airport. Customs was pretty easy. I just went to a flight-crew only aisle and acted like I had no idea what I was doing. They had me through in seconds, while everyone else from my flight waited. I pointed and laughed. They didn't like it.
I took a shuttle to my hotel instead of the cheaper bus, as a reward for not spending much in Rarotonga. True to form, I forgot everything's opposite there driving-wise, and spent a minute or so wondering why there was no door on the shuttle. Nice work dumbass, check the other side. Oops. The drive there was similar to the UK - full of roundabouts I could never navigate in a million years if I could actually drive. The hotel was dead-center downtown, 2 blocks from the harbor, facing the busiest street in the city (Queen St). Got a 10th floor room with a pretty dope view - check it...actually don't. I can't get the night pic to actually show the tower for some fucking reason. Check my facebook if you care. It's the same as the pic below...but at night. It's all lit up n stuff. Use your imagination.
For some reason, I've always been interested in TV in other countries. Not necessarily the shows, just what kind of channels they get and how much they copy/steal American stuff. Let's just say TV in New Zealand is lacking. In my room, I got the following - 4 NZ channels, Sky Sports, Sky News, 2 radio stations (?), and a 24 hour yoga channel. What the fuck? Then I went to plug in my netbook to get some internet action, and got another shock - it was 33.69 a day, and you can only use 100MB of bandwidth. I knew the price going in, but download caps? And that low? Brutal. I couldn't go to a few sites I normally frequent (not that kinda shit, eff off) because they use a lot of pics and videos and would eat up the allowable amount. AND, it was 10 cents a MB over the limit. Ridiculous.
I also remembered when I got there that I had lost an entire day. I took off from Raro at 5:45pm thursday, and landed at 8:15pm friday, since I crossed the international date line. I knew I was getting that day back when I came home, but I still felt cheated somehow. It was also completely disorienting, and I couldn't figure out what day it was for over a week after that. The people from home that I talked to didn't help, because they were a day behind me. You think it's easy to figure out? Try living it junior!
All this, and I haven't even been outside yet. It was walky time. It didn't take long to realize that a lot of downtowns are the same, but Auckland's is extremely similar to Vancouver's. It was almost eerie. Take out gastown and add some hills, and I felt like I didn't even leave home. The good thing was that there were no homeless people and it felt a lot safer, but...it was still boring. I hate downtown Vancouver, so it's not surprising that I wasn't a big fan of downtown Auckland initially. It didn't help that the one pub I went into had what seemed like crazy expensive beer at the time - 9 NZ Dollars. That's only about 6.50 Canadian, but still shocked me. I was consistently whining about the price of stuff, then immediately happy when I realized that it was 30% cheaper in Canadian. I love New Zealand.
I was a big fan of 2 things about Auckland though - the liquor store directly across the street, and room service! Shut it, I'm a baby. A 4.5 hour flight takes a lot out of a moo cow! Since downtown at night was kind of lame, I just chilled and watched some terrible TV. One room service beer was the same price as a 6 pack across the street, 7 bucks Canadian. One roasted lamb thinger and a moderate amount of non-room service beer (somewhere between 3 and 13) later, I went to sleep, kind of dissatisfied with Auckland so far.
Next day wasn't much more exciting. I started off by walking down to the harbour. Auckland is known as the "City of Sails", so I was expecting a kickass waterfront. Ah, no. Most of it is still a working port, thus it's pretty gritty. The area with all the fancy sailboats and expensive bars/restaurants is okay, but nothing compared to Stanley Park or Coal Harbour. I got my first taste of the difference between Canada and New Zealand when I sat down on the patio of one of the pubs. I waited...and waited...and waited. No service. I guess you have to go in and get your own in NZ. Oops. That was a nice waste of 15 minutes.
Since that didn't stimulate me much, I decided to walk all the way up Queen St (3km or so) to check out what the main drag was like during the day. It turned out to be 3 things - busy, multicultural, and expensive. The most amusing thing I saw was a squeegee kid. My guess is that they're not common in Auckland, because the people in every single car he approached were scared shitless. Two women actually screamed when they saw him, which made me laugh pretty hard. Neither the women or the derro (derelict, homeless person, etc) found my laughter very funny themselves, but I'm just a dirty tourist so I'm allowed to laugh at dumb shit. The reaction to him really was the most interesting thing Queen St had to offer. The rest was pretty generic. Malls, restaurants, asians, bad driving...it was like Richmond without an Ikea.
After the long walk, I figured it was pub time. 9 dollar beers again, but this pub had slot machines! These things should just bend you over and service you when you walk in though, because they're fucking rapists. When there's no one in a pub at 3pm, they're the only entertainment, so I got to playing. 2 cent slots can't pilfer that much money from you, right?
Wrong.
This Mike Tyson of a machine (only rapist I could think of offhand) ate my 20 bucks quicker than Juhl downs a cheeseburger. Quicker than Lisa mainlines a double vodka. Quicker than Jess claims the top bunk on a yurting trip. Okay, you get the idea. Anyway, I hadn't even finished 1/3 of my beer. So, like an idiot, I put in another 20, and decided to play fewer lines so my money would last longer. Good idea, right? Fuck that. I would have got as much entertainment dropping the 20 in a garbage disposal. Somehow, I was down 40 bucks in 5 minutes. Well, 49 including the beer. This is when being a loser doesn't feel so bad though, cuz 49 NZ bucks is only 34 Canadian. Not so bad at all. Yea, that made it all better. Stupid machine.
Dealing with all that excitement earned me a relaxing hotel stop, so I chilled for a while and drank beers that weren't 34 bucks a piece. I guess there were more "touristy" things I could head out and see, but I'm not really a typical tourist most of the time. I'm waaaay prettier. Anyway, Auckland has museums and underwater penguin adventures and cool islands n shit, but come on...how could any of that top the Mercure hotel and a Tui (the only good IPA beer in the world) on a saturday afternoon? Chalk another day up to me being a lazy bastard.
While I was lazing about, I noticed that there was a rugby game on. I quickly figured out that there are only 3 sports on TV in NZ - rugby, cricket, and netball. Netball is neutered basketball for white girls that doesn't allow dribbling or body contact. Basically, it's fucking stupid. Cricket's not so bad if you have 3 days to watch a match. Rugby though? Fucking AWESOME. I can't believe I have any respect for NFL players after watching high-level rugby. These guys beat the living bejesus out of each other, with no pads. I just happened to show up on the last day of the Super 14 season, and got to watch 3 games that decided who'd make the playoffs. They all ruled. Rugby's my new favourite sport (other than hockey and MMA).
I won all 3 rugby bets I made online, which earned me back the money I lost to the sexual assault machine in the pub. To celebrate, I went...back to a pub. Duh. Too bad it was a miserable failure. Don't get me wrong, there are lots of pubs, but they were either packed with rugby watchers, or waaay beyond my idea of a dress code. I couldn't find anything other than my hotel bar, which seemed pretty lame. But, a pub is a pub is a pub, and the lamest places can turn out to be pretty damn cool sometimes. I talked to just about everyone in there (all 7 of them), and they were all from other parts of NZ. Despite the multiculturalism outside the hotel doors, these people acted like I was a huge novelty by visiting their country. They bought me beer, enviously bitched about Australia, and explained cricket well enough that I actually understood the rules. Sort of. The best part was, unlike Australians, it seems that Kiwis use very little slang, so I could actually understand what they were saying. I learned more about NZ in those 4 hours than I had in 4 months of research.
Folks, nights like this are why I travel. Anyone can sit in front of a computer and memorize stuff, but LIVING this stuff is how you really learn about places and people. I'm lucky that I'm consistently able to meet people that are willing to take the time to help me get a feel for the places I go. I'm not the most outgoing person, but Kiwis are extremely personable people and made me feel at ease no matter where I was. It was awesome.
Where was I? Auckland, right. So after the informative night and a good sleep, I got up with the intention of taking this hop on/hop off bus that goes all over the city and covers the main sights. Notice the word intention. Apparently that good sleep wasn't quite long enough, because the next thing I know it was 1pm. Go Tim. I decided to hit up a pub for lunch and...they're all closed. Say what? Apparently Auckland still likes Jesus or some shit, because everything was closed on sunday. Another reason to dislike religion. It also happened to be raining, which actually didn't bother me since it was 20+ degrees every other day so far and I hate heat. I decided to go for a long ass walk, and cover everything in the downtown core I hadn't already seen.
An hour later, I was back. Come on, this is me we're talking about. Were you expecting a 12 hour trek or something? Suuuure. I'm a giraffe, not a camel. Turns out there's just not a ton to see. Some nice buildings. A supposedly nice square that's under construction. And so on. So, now what? What to do, what to do? There was another hotel bar on the top floor, so why not check that out?
All I can say about it is HAHAHA. I paid another 9 NZD for a beer, and sat down to look at...the exact same view that my hotel room has, but 3 floors up. What. A. Waste. And to top it off, they didn't have one TV in the place. There just so happened to be the most important (and last) Super 14 game of the regular season about to start, and they don't have a TV? What the fuck? One shotgunned beer and an elevator ride later, I was back in the lobby bar. TVs! Jager bombs! Rugby! I'm sure you can guess how this afternoon/night ended.
So, I woke up hungover. Quelle surprise! Apparently I came back to the lobby twice to tell them my room card wasn't working...turns out I was just trying to get into the wrong room. Oops. Don't remember that. I was told that little nugget of info during checkout, while a Contiki tour full of hot women was checking in. Damn me and my shitty timing! Normally I wouldn't give a shit about being a retard, cuz let's face it...that shit happens all the time. But I was actually staying in this hotel again the next week for my last night in NZ, so I'm sure they were SUPER HAPPY to have me as a returning guest. And I ended up finding out for sure when I got back. As usual - Go Tim.
After a nice tour of the city via the shuttle driver who had to pick people up all over the damn place, I was on my way to Queenstown. That little tour actually gave me some hope for the city, cuz the burbs are pretty nice. I'd say Auckland is a nice mix between Vancouver and San Francisco. Pretty nice surroundings, hilly, nice houses, and very clean. You could definitely live in worse places. I still hadn't felt like I had left home yet in terms of NZ though, so I was excited about moving on into "real" New Zealand. And I definitely got my money's worth. You'll find out about that next time.
Bonus pics. Don't worry, if you like pics, there are lots more of the other cities. Auckland just wasn't that interesting.
Hotel room view during the day
The "City of Sails". Yeehaw.
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