New Zealand was pretty sweet, especially our first stop, Auckland. Contrary to popular belief, New Zealand is an affordable place to be, in our minds. We found most of the things that we normally buy in Australia were much cheaper here. Plus Auckland had Burger King (not Hungry Jack’s) and I saw a Wendy’s restaurant for the first time in a long time. But still no Taco Bell.
Auckland is the only city in the world built on an active volcanic field. Why they chose to do this, I will never know. When we visited the museum in Auckland, there was an exhibit on volcanoes that included a display proving that basically no one who lives in the city is aware that there could be an eruption at any point. The last eruption in the area was in 1996. These people are crazy.
We got lucky enough that a volcano did NOT erupt while we were there because one of the bigger tourist attractions is to visit all the volcanoes. The first day we climbed Mt. Eden, on which the government allows people to graze their animals. Mt. Eden had cattle.
After Mt. Eden we hit up the Auckland War Memorial Museum. It was a pretty neat place, but probably would have been even more interesting if I had known ANYTHING about New Zealand history before we got there. We got to see some neat things built by the Maori people, New Zealand’s original inhabitants.
Then there was the aforementioned volcano exhibit. They had a little house where you were supposed to feel what it was like to be in your house during an eruption. The house didn’t shake around or anything, but it still makes you feel kinda weird seeing ash and dust fly in from miles away just to blanket everything around you and your home. Not something I would want to go through. Again, not sure why ANYONE lives on a volcanic field, but they probably wonder why I live in an area that has tornadoes all the time. We pick our poison I guess.
After the museum, we tried to keep working through our daily plans and went across town to One Tree Hill. This place inspired the song by the same title (which inspired the TV show). Keeping up with the apparent theme of the volcanoes, One Tree Hill was the home to grazing sheep.
On top of One Tree Hill is a monument erected to honor the Maori people who were pushed out of the area by original settlers. There’s also a grave of Sir John Logan Campbell, who actually owned the hill and the land immediately surrounding it. He wanted to protect the area as a memorial to the Maori people. So, I guess he deserves to be buried on the place that meant a lot to him. Though I wonder if he wanted a bunch of random people like us walking around on his grave site.
We were tired from a long day of walking up and down mountains as well as across town (since we hadn’t exactly grasped the public transport system yet), but we pressed on and finished the day at the Skytower. The tower is really neat at night when it gets all lit up and gives some great views of the city and surrounding area.
If a large city with decent landscape doesn’t have a huge tower, it’s missing out on some easy tourist dollars. When we go to a city with a huge tower, you can bet we’ll be getting there somehow. I mean, if you don’t want pictures, maybe you won’t – but we want those pics!!
The next day we walked up Rangitoto Island, the most recent volcano to erupt in the area and supposedly the most active of the volcanoes in the city. As opposed to the other ones we visited that had a lot of greenery that had grown up over the years, Rangitoto Island had a lot of volcanic rocks still left behind from the last eruption.
Another long walk up a mountain gave us more great views of the city, as well as some more historical parts of Auckland. Rangitoto Island is situated on its own in the Auckland harbor and used to be home to a military outlook post where enemy ships could be seen from miles away. We got some pictures in these posts, including a sweet one (the first one shown).
The following day was the best one we had on this trip. We decided awhile back to try something adventurous, so we signed up for canyoning. To be honest, we didn’t have an idea what the heck it entailed, but we wanted to give it a shot anyway. We actually hadn’t confirmed our booking yet (yeah, the night before, we are very smooth), so I called the company only to find out we were going to have to pay for a full-day trip because there were no other sign-ups for the half-day (our original selection). But we didn’t want to miss another tour, so we paid the extra $30 and went on our way.
Before hanging up the phone, I asked the guide on the other end of the line if any experience was necessary for canyoning. When he could only laugh and say, “Well, if you’re decently athletic, you’ll be OK,” I figured we were in for it. Instead it was a great experience.
If anyone is thinking about doing something crazy like this, don’t think about it, just do it. That is, as long as you have the physical capabilities – and some mental aspect. Though, if you’re trying to overcome the fear of heights, skydiving might just be the way to do it, depending on your mental status in that regard.
We left Auckland on a very high note, ready to tackle anything and everything in Christchurch, the next stop on our trip. The city is located on New Zealand’s South Island and is described as the country’s most English city. An Anglican cathedral is the center of the city (Cathedral Square) and a lot of the buildings look like old English ones as well. It was a bit different from the modern Auckland.
There wasn’t a whole lot to do in Christchurch, which wasn’t so bad at this point in our trip because this was our fourth city in nine days and we were a little burned out on the tourist stuff. Christchurch did have some neat little things though, namely the historic Tram and Gondola. The tram runs all day through the city and is nice to ride just to be in the old tram cars.
The gondola was an easy reminder of the Sky Ride at Cedar Point, but traveled uphill more than over a distance. Unfortunately we didn’t get a great view of the city once we reached the top because it was really foggy that day.
Our final day in Christchurch we were scheduled to take a tandem paragliding trip. After spending basically the entire day trying to reach the company in charge of our paragliding, I reached him just in time to find out it was too windy to do it that day. We got our money back, but it was tour #3 to be canceled on this trip. We still tackled just about everything Christchurch had to offer tourists and got a bit of rest in as well. Which was good because we were headed to the busy city of Melbourne next.
Melbourne is described as the most cosmopolitan city in Australia, which basically means there is a lot of shopping. We were greeted at the airport by the Customs officers, the same ones we encountered when we first entered Melbourne way back in the end of June (our flight was from Los Angeles to Melbourne, then connected immediately to Sydney, but we had to go through customs in Melbourne first). Last time went much smoother because, well, when you tell the truth on those immigration cards, it just puts you in position to be hassled.
The quarantine signs tell you to “Declare or Beware” when thinking about taking food and natural items into Australia. This made me think, “Well, as long as I write down what I’m brining in and show the officers those items, we can be on our way.” Why I even think things anymore, I have no idea. Apparently “Declare or Beware” should really be read as “Declare and wolf down all of your food once you get inside.”
In Christchurch, I thought about spending our remaining money in the casino, but I never got to it and wanted to be sure we had enough money for the cab we had to take the morning of our flight to Melbourne. When we arrived at the airport in Christchurch, we had about $12 in New Zealand currency left to use, which we weren’t going to exchange because the flat exchange fee would’ve taken about half of that amount. Instead we purchased a Powerade and a chicken baguette sandwich in the airport to have for lunch in Melbourne and saved $6 to buy muffins on board the plane.
I marked on my immigration card that we had food items and didn’t lie about one thing, thinking it was a better-safe-than-sorry situation. It was, to an extent, because I could have been charged $200 per food item that I DIDN’T claim. Instead, we had to mow down the baguette sandwich while standing at the Customs desk while our bags were being inspected. We weren’t even hungry, but when you have already committed money to something, you can’t just let it go out the window. On a side note, the baguette was pretty good for coming from a small stand at the airport.
The other stuff that was claimed included all of our dead coral we collected from the beach in Rockhampton. This was discouraging because the coral was going to serve as an easy (and cheap) reminder of the Great Barrier Reef, as well as being a gift for family and friends when we got back. The kicker is that Australian Customs had to confiscate their own freaking coral. When we entered into New Zealand, their Customs office didn’t seem to care and hardly searched anything (again, I answered the immigration card completely honestly). It was only when we got back into Australia that the coral (from their OWN COUNTRY) was taken away. What a joke. I received a paper stating that I could file for a permit to receive all of our things back, but chances are I won’t be able to get it. I’m still going to try because, if nothing else, it’ll surely make for another good story.
Once we got out of the airport, you’d think our day could only look up from there. We made it safely to the city on the airport shuttle with no problems, but after that point it gets crazy. We stopped at a Traveler’s Help station to ask about which trams or buses we needed to take to get to our hostel (which was located a little ways out of the city). After taking our first tram, we had to transfer to another one – our final one – to get to our place. What we didn’t anticipate was the giant protest by some union workers against Australian Prime Minister John Howard that was going down the street – the same street down which our tram was supposed to run.
Instead, we had to walk about 8 blocks with all of our bags and pick up the tram at a different point farther down the line. It wasn’t exactly the way we drew it up, but neither is any game-winning play in a sports contest – or life in general. When we finally arrived at our hostel, we found out the lady at the desk (and owner, I think) almost gave away our room because we hadn’t shown up yet – strange considering we were never informed about a time by which we had to check in. At any rate, we got our room at “The Beach” and were not disappointed with the view from our window.
The first thing we decided to do was to just dive right into the city and see what we could find to do. AFL World was along the way, so we grabbed a coupon and took our tour through what was really more of a kids’ center. It was a lot of fun trying to kick the ball and pass it (not throw it overhand, but “punch” it like an underhand volleyball serve) similar to how the AFL players do it. I also know that I could probably never play this sport.
The next day we decided to get up early and take a trip out of the city to ride Puffing Billy, the oldest steam-powered train in Australia. It was a nice little trip going through the wooded areas around Melbourne.
Following Puffing Billy was the Grand Final Parade down the streets of Melbourne. It was pretty interesting to see the weird things the Australians put in their parades because, as you can see from some of the pics below, it’s a little unclear as to what some of this stuff is.
(If you don't recognize these guys, visit http://youtube.com/watch?v=Mv5U0W8FDDk)
We finished off the week by visiting the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the annual site of the AFL Grand Final. This place has been around for years and serves as a multi-sport facility and a home field for a host of teams. It was also a home for U.S. soldiers during WWII. The place is huge as well, holding over 100,000 people at times. It doesn’t seem that big, but the only way I can justify it is by assuming it holds more people because it is shaped like an oval as opposed to being straight-edged on the boundaries like most stadiums in the U.S.
We ended our day at the Melbourne Observation Deck. Again, if you’re ever in charge of a big city, build a huge tower because, if your construction company is anything reliable, the tourist money will pay for the structure soon enough. And again, we got some great pictures.
Saturday we didn’t schedule a thing because it was the day of the Grand Final – the Port Adelaide Power against the Geelong Cats. We didn’t get tickets, but sat in Federation Square with a bunch of other random people to watch the game on a big screen. Sara had her Port scarf on, which drew a lot of comments from Geelong fans – the most common of which was, “Go the Catters!!” That is a direct quote. Off on a tangent now...
Sporting fans here have weird little sayings for their teams. The worst thing to hear someone say is the word “the” in front of the team name. For example, if this was the case in the U.S., I would be saying, “Go the Browns!!” instead of just “Go Browns!!” It doesn’t make any sense, but hey, they’re on the other side of the world, so I guess they can do what they want.
The Grand Final was awful to watch. To put it in perspective, I would have rather watched a replay of the Browns-Steelers game from Week One this season, and not because I like the Browns. Port Adelaide held a 2-1 lead over the Cats, but that was about as good as it got for the Power in a 163-44 loss. It was the biggest margin of victory in Grand Final history. In a related story, I’m very sad I didn’t bet on Geelong to cover (they were an 18 ½ point favorite). What made it worse was that we were fans from Adelaide among a sea of Geelong fans (Geelong is a city of its own that is very close to Melbourne). Fortunately we didn’t get heckled too much and made it back to our place in one piece with time to pack our bags and get ready for our final flight before the ones we’ll take in November to go back to the U.S.
Our flight from a regional airport (about an hour’s drive away from Melbourne, just a hassle and a lot of waiting around and traveling) was delayed a little bit, but we arrived safely at the Adelaide Airport around 10:45 p.m. A pick-up by our landlady and housemate, a quick drive back to 17C St. Bernard’s Road and we could breathe again.
Our 17-day trip came to an end at the same place where it started. Sara took a quick nap before the Browns game came on (2:30 a.m. our time) and we were greeted with a treat as the Brownies won a big game over the hated Ravens. A fitting end to a great vacation. Not to mention the Indians were going to be starting their first postseason since 2001 later in the week. Now they have a 2-0 lead in the series and Romeo Crennel thinks he could win in a game if he literally took on Bill Belichick. Even today, Notre Dame got its first win of the year by forcing 7 turnovers to beat UCLA on the road. Yup things are going well.
As I type, it is just 4 weeks from the day I’ll be back in the U.S. It’s been crazy how fast this time has gone. But don’t worry, I won’t quit blogging. I’m just hoping I can do it more often than the once-every-three-weeks pace found recently.
That’s all for now. Love you all in the states. Stay tuned for what should be a GREAT story when I try to cancel my application for permission to work and my thoughts on the Browns, Indians, Jeff Gordon and, yes, the Irish.
From the other side of the globe, I’m Kevin Hunt.
If you want to see me soon, ask for more patience because the return is about four weeks away.
1 comment:
Hey Kevin,
Are you bald now. It looks good, and I think it takes a few years off.
Chewy
Post a Comment