Over the moon...

Kia Ora, bro. Or hello, to those that do not speak Maori.

Happy days, I get to blog.

Dermot and Freddie are black water rafting right now. I was planning on doing it, we had paid for me to do it, but I woke up this morning and truly realized what the f#ck black water rafting entails, and I chickened out. I'll let someone push me out of a plane over Mount Doom (Tongariro National Park) but I'm not gonna raft in a cave by myself with a single light on my head and a single tub keeping me afloat.

Bgok! Bgok! (Chicken noises?)

By the way, Freddie is our friend we met in the last hostel back.

Anyway, we'll start at the beginning, or the plane ride from Berlin to Auckland.

It was the nicest plane ride I've ever taken. Korean airlines is packed with polite, helpful employees, you get great food, free socks, and loads of great movies to watch. And in between the movies they show you clips of how to do airplane yoga, which after 20 hours of sitting down, felt really nice. So getting here was really a peice of cake. It's a small world when you think of it. We can fly to the farthest land mass away within 24 hours, and you get free socks in the meantime. Lovin your work.

That's another saying here, loving your work. The Kiwis are full of catch phrases. New Zealanders called themselves Kiwis, not after the fruit, but from the native, flightless bird. Makes sense, right?

We arrived in Auckland on the 28th. It was sunny and warm.

We took showers, left our stuff at the hostel, then walked to the local town of Parnell, where our hostel was located, to get some food. Parnell is a very posh borough of Auckland, so cheap backpacker food was hard to find. We ended up in The Bog, an Irish pub for a pint and some burgers.

The Phillies were playing on the t.v. I assumed it was the rained out game, a re-run, it couldn't be game 5. But it was the bottom of the 6th inning...

Bar tender, excuse me, is this game live?

Yep, this game is live.

Dermot and I got to watch a team from Philadelphia WIN a championship. It was the greatest, most random moment. Something must've told me to go into that pub, probably the only pub in Auckland showing the game. I got to watch it live. I still don't believe it. The Philadelphia Phillies are world champs. Phuck yeah!

Auckland was a great city. It's the biggest city in the North Island, where we'll be spending the next couple of weeks. We got to drink in a pub called Father Ted's and watch the All Blacks beat the Aussie's in rugby. Dermot called Auckland mini America. We got to eat at Wendy's, it was very exciting all together. Though relatively small, there's a great street called Queen St that has lots of pubs and restaurants and an IMAX theatre we took well advantage of (we hadn't seen a movie in months!) It's great to be in a country that speak English, haha.

And Maori.

New Zealand has only been a country since 1840. I guess because of that the natives and their culture had a chance of survival against the colonization. The English were the first ones here and they signed a treaty with the natives that gave them their land and their language and protection against other potential white faced threats (i.e. the French and the Dutch). So nowadays, you are of European or Maori descent (or of course both, love knows no bounds). I know I'm only seeing the tip of the iceberg. I'm sure there are grave social injustices and prejudice, but it's wonderful to see the European incorporate the Maori culture into their own, and almost show it off with pride and humility. It makes me wonder if in another world the US couldn't have been this way. Native American culture at the forefront instead of radio-active reservations and bloody memories...

We stayed in Auckland for 5 days, 3 of which it took us to get over the jet lag. Going to bed at 5 p.m. and waking up a 6 a.m. was fun (not).

During the five days there, we took a day tour. The woman giving the tour said we're going to start the day with a game. Everyone stand up who wants the chance to win a free bungy jump off of Auckland's Sky Tower (the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere). Dermot stands up. After two rounds of heads or tails, Dermot wins the contest. A half hour the contest, Dermot is standing on top on the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere getting ready to jump off it. I'm standing below getting it all on camera.

3,2,1, and Dermot jumps!

I have it all on video. I'll post it soon.

Luck of the Irish, right?

After Auckland we headed north to the Bay of Islands in our new (used) car that we bought. It's a Mazda Astina. It drives, and it has breaks, good enough for me. And the guy we bought it from gave us a written guarantee that when we bring it back to him, if it's still in one peice, he'll buy it back from us for a little under what we paid for it. I drove and Dermot navigated. There are only like 4 roads in New Zealand (just kidding) so it wasn't hard for us to find Paihia, the town in which we were anchoring in in the Bay of Islands.

It was beautiful and the weather cleared up for us giving us 4 sunny and warm days by the beach.

Jealous? ;-)

We met Freddie Judge from London in our hostel the first day and figured out that we were all headed the same direction for the next week or so, we'll tag along together and see what kind of stuff we can get up to. The second day in Paihia we did some extreme flip flopping along the rocky coast of the beach. Dermot got blisters and everything.

The third day we took an Awesome Experience tour bus up to the north of the North Island to Cape Reinga where our bus driver drove us along a 90 mile beach, taught us some more catchy phrases, made us listen to Kiwi reggae music, pushed us down high verticle sand dunes on boogey boards, and fed us fish and chips. Sweet as, bro.

The fourth day my mom called me every hour to update me on the election. And around 4 o'clock New Zealand time I got a text from Carrie: OBAMA! And a phone call from my mom a second later saying it was official, President Elect Barack Obama. Dermot, Freddie and I were walking around downtown Paihia at the time. Dermot took a picture of me screaming with joy before I ran all the way back to our hostel to watch the live coverage on CNN.

Pinch me, the Phillies and Obama win in one week.

Best. Week. Ever.

We headed south for Waitomo then after making the most of the Bay of Islands.

We stopped over in Auckland to pick up some stuff we forgot in the hostel and do a Skyscreamer reverse bungy, when in New Zealand!

Waitomo is a remote part of the North Island, you have to find it on small roads through winding hills. It was lovely. I saw what looked like Shire (from the Lord of the Rings) at every turn (the whole fecking North Island looks like the Shire) but this part of it even more so. The sun was setting and it turned the mountains purple.

As the sun began the set, I noticed a couple of cars coming towards me were flashing there lights. At first I thought it meant a cop was ahead, or something. But when the cars kept flashing, even miles up the road, I made Freddie get out of the car and check my headlights, maybe they weren't working.

They weren't.

Freddie said, well, you better hurry up then because the sun is going to set soon.

Cue the reverse vampirism.

We chased the last bit of sunset through the winding, dark roads towards Waitomo. Dermot asked Freddie for his miners cap (i.e. the thing he uses to read books at night in the room) to shine towards the road ahead and I turned the emergency blinkers on.

For 15 km we rode in the dark, seeing the signs for Waitomo in the blink of the emergency lights.
It was hysterically insane.

We parked the car in the bright lights of Waitomo's only pub, waddled our way to our hostel which happened to be right behind the pub, dropped our stuff off in the room, and proceeded to drink and laugh away the danger. Freddie played some awful songs on the juke box and we went to sleep safe and sound.

Yesterday we drove around the countryside of Waitomo, eventually ending up at the black sand beach where local Maori women were catching fish (apparently to put in omelets) and I managed to get burnt in the 3 minutes I took off my hoody when the sun managed to show itself. New Zealand has "bugger all" ozone. Apparently.

Tomorrow we head to Rotorua, i.e. the movie location for the Shire, and the heart of Maori culture in the whole country.

Sweet as, bro.