People are strange

When you're a stranger. . .

(It seems something went horribly wrong last time, hopefully this time it'll work better.)

And so we were in Auckland once more, if only for a few days. We thought we picked a nice hostel but it seemed that in our attempts to steer clear of the party-going crowd we stumbled right into the heart of them. We entered the kitchen on our floor greeted by a man sleeping on the carpet, snoring the loud snore that spoke of a night filled with liquor. The other people in the room were laughing at him quietly, as they watched us enter and nodded their heads in greeting. Our dorm room housed 8 people in rickety bunk beds that swayed back and forth with every movement made. We placed our bags, we have a lot them now, by our beds as best we could and headed off to the store for supplies. 8 Grocery bags later, we made dinner and headed to our favourite internet cafe, mildly disappointed that our regular cashier wasn’t there. When we got out again day had turned to night and we headed back. With the lounge outside our room empty and most of the beds already filled we expected no disturbances and prepared for a good night sleep. About 30 minutes later I was awoken by an intensive argument between two guys who were bragging about how they didn’t really care for rugby, but were still pretty good at it. As the argument went on it was crystal clear that they both cared a great deal about rugby, but for some reason were afraid to admit it. I had plenty of time to wonder about this as the argument dragged on for quite a while and at a volume so high even the people in the reception 4 stories below us must have heard it.

The next day was shop till you drop day, which meant we visited 4 stores before we had to stop at a Subway© to recover. The result: 1 new camera, 2 new books for Jasper and some pegs for our tent. We then set forth on the perilous Journey to Mt. Eden which would take us through the treacherous lands of St. Albert park and Auckland Domain. 1 Hour and many adventures later we ascended the hill unscathed and victoriously. As we pondered our journey and the many perils we faced and enemies we conquered, a bus pulled up and when it opened its doors a flood of Chinese came pouring out, all armed to the teeth with cameras. We set there gazing at them in amazement for a minute or two, when another bus pulled up releasing from its seat covered insides a horde of backpacking tourists (we of course are far superior to this group *hides camera*). As the Chinese tourists made way, the backpackers arranged themselves along the edge of the hill. After they’d all taken the exact same photo, they were immediately herded back into the bus and driven off to the next amazing sight.

After we felt we’d taken in as much of Mt. Eden’s glory as we could possibly handle we walked back taking a few shortcuts on the way (read: running down the hill numerous times). After a few minutes of walking we couldn’t find where we were on the puzzle of maps in my Lonely Planet and I whipped out the trusty compass. Who would bring a compass into the city you ask? Well, I would of course! And so, looking idiots we checked our compass and found that we’d descended the hill on the wrong side and were going completely in the wrong direction. After walking on a few roads that eventually proved to be blocked by natural obstacles (high-ways, shopping malls, etc.) we made it to what was sort of the right direction. But elk nadeel heb z’n voordeel, and so we got to see a lot more of Auckland than we originally planned and we even ran into a store that sold the sim-card I was after!

That evening we met up with Tatjana and Steffi again and went out for a few beers. Well, we met up with Steffi. Tatjana and Zumina (or something like that) were 1.5 hours late and met up with us at the bar.

The bar was nice and quiet and served good beer, and very big portions of fries, unfortunately because it was Monday they also closed very early and we were forced to move to another bar. Eventually Tatjana led us to another bar that had live music. The music was nice, though the singer couldn't seem to remember whole songs, and sometimes just played the first verse twice. It was a bit hard to talk so we just played some card games, one of which involved recognizing cards fast which was made extra difficult due to the fact that all the lighting was red and the red cards were almost impossible to read.

Eventually me, Jasper and Steffi called it a night and said goodbye to Tatjana and Zumina.

The next day was filled with a large amount of nothing that kept us entertained for hours, the evening was filled with the same amount of nothing.

The day after that we took the bus to Thames in the Coromandel peninsula. We arrived at the bus platform at 1:05 (we were supposed to assemble at 1:00 and the bus left at 1:15) and our tardiness seemed to cause a fair bit of annoyance to the bus driver, even though we figured we were still well on time.

After about one and a half hours of driving the bus driver stopped somewhere by the side of the road and announced he had to go back to Bombay (Bombay in New Zealand that is). He didn't give us a reason or anything and we could only hope we'd get to Thames before dinner time. When we finally arrived in Thames it was about 4 PM, 1.5 hours later than planned. We had a Holiday park in mind that was about 3km from Thames and we figured we'd be able to walk that, but just to be sure we asked the people at the i-Center if it was within walking distance. This resulted in the girl behind the desk immediately calling the Park to ask if they could come pick us up, which they could.

Of course it was raining quite heavily when we wanted to pitch our tent, so we were forced to do it in record time. We managed to wipe everything relatively dry, after the tent was up, using our dishcloth so we didn’t have a repeat of last time. The park itself seemed nice enough, it had a pool, a clean kitchen (though their cutlery set consisted of two forks and nothing else) and a pretty sweet lounge with TV and a bookcase full of books. Since I had finished my book (the one that got wet) I was looking for one to replace it with, and I finally settled for War and Peace by Tolstoy, even though the book was huge and weighed a ton.

The next day we headed into town to buy groceries and check out the local stores. I ended up buying a hat, and Jasper bought a netbook, which he got down to a fair price after a splendid display of haggling (I have a wife and three kids to feed!).

We also booked our canyon trip to the sleeping god mountain, which was supposed to be one of the best of New Zealand.