By my best estimate, I had slept for fourteen hours. I did however have to compensate for going a very long time without sleeping, and having a long, walking filled day. So, it adds up about right in my book. The next day was the 4th(!) of July, and it looked like it would be another rainy one.
Yet, after I had my delicious breakfast of gold kiwi and gold kiwi and gold kiwi, the sun came out. Julie woke up, and we decided to wander off into Auckland to see what there was to do. As it turns out, there isn't all that much to do in the city. We wandered around some of the areas I was at the day before, but in the pleasant weather it was much nicer. We also took a stroll down Queen Street, which is where all of the shopping and eating things are in Auckland. There were approximately two karaoke bars for every three blocks in Auckland, and well over 75 percent of them were "Japanese karaoke bars" specifically. Evidently all of the Asians in Auckland -- of which there are many -- love them some karaoke.
There was an awesome and cheap sushi place somewhere right along Queen Street. I got sushi lunch for under five dollars. They do some different sushi here that I had never seen in the US. The best was teriyaki chicken sushi. It was makizushi but instead of normal things in the middle it was teriyaki chicken. They also had a roll that they slice and then fry the pieces in tempura batter. It was also delicious, if not a bit heavy. Well worth it though.
We wound up at the ferry terminal eventually and had a quick decision to make. We could buy a ticket on a ferry leaving in three minutes to some island where we would have no idea what to do, or we could take our time and take a bus to the zoo. The pamphlet for the island made it seem promising, but lack of decision making skills on my part meant that the decision was made for us. Easy. With the sun still barely poking its head through the clouds, we got on a bus that would take us near the zoo.
And we sat on the bus. And kept sitting on the bus. It was great. We were sitting on the bus for probably thirty minutes before it actually left. In that time, we spoke of many wonderful things ranging from poutine to French Canadians to Amurica. It was during this time I believe that Julie told me of the wonderful thing you can say to screw with people on this side of the world. Instead of saying cheers, you just say "cheese." It sounds enough like their accent that they don't think about it, but then they realize that someone speaking in an entirely different accent said something that sounded Kiwi. And they double take. So, thanks for the inspiration for the blog title!
After a short time on the bus, it stopped, but no one was getting off. The kind bus driver, who we had asked if this was the right bus for the zoo, gave his best "ahem" and then said, "Auckland zoo."
Neither of us realized we were even close to the zoo, so we would have missed it by several hours if we had our way. I threw out my best "cheese!" to the bus driver as we left out the back door of the bus, and we were on our way. In the interest of having so much shit to write, I'll only talk briefly about the zoo.
There was this awesome bird that made an amazingly shrill high pitched call, that we managed to imitate and have it respond. Probably ten minutes were wasted on trying to convince the thing to make noise.
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| Taller than a hippo, shorter than a giraffe! |
Further along, an awesome meercat enclosure promised meerkat tunnels. We were excited to go through them until we realized that it meant crawling on our hands and knees through increasingly darker, damper, and smaller tunnels. What started out as fun ended up as really, really creepy. But I got to wave at some people from what was technically inside of the barrier of the exhibit, from a plastic bubble.
They have a chimp that has diabetes. So if you feed her, she might actually die. She was a tea party monkey back in the day, so they treat her well because they realize that she used to be a side show back in the day.
Auckland Zoo was holding an olympics promotion where you had to measure yourself up against a bunch of animals so you could get a sticker at the end. There were height, weight, distance jumping and sprinting categories. Unfortunately, I was not aware of this promotion and the bitch at the entrance wouldn't give a sticker unless I actually went through and completed all of the shit.
We got back from the zoo, and Julie wished me a happy American Independence Day, and asked what I was going to do to celebrate. I hadn't even realized that it was the 4th of July, and even when I saw the date I forgot it had anything to do with anything. Unfortunately, I didn't do anything special, but I did have a huge and delicious ice cream cone. It seemed very American. There weren't any fireworks or hot dogs or anything. Sad day. But not really.
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| Ice cream! Go Amurica |
The next morning I was off to Christchurch. My flight was delayed for almost two hours because of fog in Auckland. Two flights to Christchurch before me were cancelled because the planes couldn't land in Auckland at all. I was lucky to get to Christchurch at all, even if it was late.
Christchurch and Methven later.
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