My mission upon arriving in Auckland was to go find a car. I'm starting to notice a pattern that when I get to a new place, I don't take many pictures until I feel like I've got my feet on the ground and get over what ever culture shock happens to be hitting me upside the head. Can you get culture shock coming to New Zealand? Well, a bit. Mostly sticker shock. It's hard going from a place where you pay US 0.25 for a 1.5 L of water to a place where it's US 2.50. Where the US $15 or $20 that used to get you a really nice room w/ carved wood / private bathroom or a bungalow right on the beach to where the same gets you a dorm bed in a youth hostel.

And, again the traffic. Just when I'd gotten used to walking directly into solid traffic that never let up, knowing that if you didn't hesitate and kept moving into the same direction, no one would hit you, now I was among people standing on corners of empty streets, no traffic as far as you could see in either direction, waiting for the signal to change to "walk."

About 4 million people live in New Zealand and about 1 million of them live in Auckland. It's probably about the nicest and emptiest big city I've ever seen. Wish I took pictures. I milled around the downtown, did some shopping, looked for a place to stay and ended up at the International Youth Hostel. Dorm bed -- a bed in a room w/ four other people. Nice place actually. Took a long, hot shower, the first one with that much pressure and hot water in a long time.

Did I mention that the plane flight from Bngkok was really long. Traveling is a great way to hone up on your geography. For some reason I was under the impresson that Thailand and New Zealand were roughly in the same neighborhood. And they are. Roughly in the same way that Panama and Fairbanks Alaska are in the same neighborhood.... I didn't realize what a great deal I got from the people who put my flights together: Airtreks

Buying a car is a stressful thing and doing it in another country is even harder. You can get around NZ w/ a car, but it's the kind of place where having a car can make a big difference. Renting will cost you at least $20/day. It's possible to get around without one, but you'll end up not being able to easily get to a lot of really cool places, as it's so sparse here. A lot of travelers buy a car and then try to sell it when they leave. Kelly actually made all of her money back.

On Sundays, just south of Auckland, there is a big car fair -- several hundred people selling used cars. I had my mind set on a Subaru. There were several 91's being sold for $NZ 3100ish -- all w/ paint problems and other things broken. I found a 94 w/ an ask price of $NZ 4350. It seemed in so much better shape than the others and seemed like it might be easier to sell. Great paint, interior, electric everything (windows/locks/seats). And it was the only one w/ a CD player. I was an idiot and didn't get it checked out by the on-site mechanics.

I ended up buying it for $NZ 4000 ($US 3000). The idea of something major going wrong or not being able to sell it is really stressful. Heck, just buying a car is stressful. I hope this was a good idea. Or at least I don't loose my shirt on this.

At home I have a 2003 Blue Subaru Outback -- the "Blue Roo" and so I figured it would be fun to buy one down here. This car is nearly the same except for it's dark green instead of blue and, well, the steering wheel is on the other side. The "Anti Roo." If the two cars that I now own were to somehow collide with each other, they would immediately be transformed to pure energy (E) in an amount described by the square (2) of: the weight of the two cars (m) times some constant (c). And if memory serves correctly, it would be quite a bang.

Whangerei Headlands

When I was here about a year ago, we had to cancel a dive trip to Poor Knight's Island -- New Zealand's top dive spot and one of Jacque Cousteau's world top 10. Brandy and Elaine were coming on Wednesday so I figured I'd go do that till then.

The car ended up needing some work -- new brakes and a problem w/ the plate below the transmission, so I ended up spending this day getting to know Whangerei's industrial district and the local mechanics.

I stayed at the Whangerei International Youth Hostel -- a really quaint place up on the hill over looking town. The owner (or manager -- forgot his name) was one of those inspiring 70-year-olds w/ piercing in his eyebrow, tongue and (???) and had recently been sky diving. At night he led a hike up into a local hill where there were a lot of glow worms. Again, no pictures. They really do glow quite bright. They create a mucous tube in which they live and from that they suspend several clear mucous threads. The glow is the same bioluminescent blue-green that you see in fire-flies or the water at night. It's not the whole worm -- just a spot on it's head^h^h^h^ [correction: that's what the guy said, but it turns out that it is indeed on it's bum and has something to do w/ the back end of its GI tract] and serves to attract other small insects at night which get caught on the thread, hoisted up and eaten. They end up looking like blue-green stars on the edge of the stream and up on the cliff.

One of the largest sea caves in the world (?)

The Poor Knight's Islands were about an hour's boat ride from the mainland. The islands were beautiful, mostly rock cliffs jutting straight out of the ocean. There were many sea caves and arches, many large enough to take the large dive-boat through. There was no getting out and exploring the island as it was said to be "sacred."

The diving was ... ok. I was expecting a bit more for a world-top-dive-spot, but sometimes you can be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The first dive sucked, actually, and the second was much better. We dove through a cave (actually a long arch) and met some very personable fish, a large (1M+ across) sting-ray, a large yellow moray eel and I actually got Suzuki's trick of using a certain hand motion to get a huge school of Jacks to follow you around to work. The dive through the cave/arch was beautiful.

As usual I underestimated the NZ drive times and was about an hour late getting to the airport to meet Brandy & Elaine. Their flight was 1/2 hr early. I was about to leave when I found them outside -- they had been there for 5 minutes and had been in customs, etc the entire time....

We drove down to Breck & Marci's on the Coromandel Peninsula

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Marci & Breck are two inspiring friends from home (San Luis Obispo) who bought a house in NZ and are working on a second one in Oz, since they can only legally live here 4 1/2 months out of the year. They've got a great place in Whitianga on the Coromandel Peninsula. In my opinion, it's just as nice here if not nicer than the famous Bay of Islands, etc up north.

They're great hosts -- their house is actually in "Ferry Landing" -- right across from Whitianga. To get to town, you can either drive about 40 min around a large bay or you can take the ferry across the mouth of the bay which takes about 3 minutes. The weather, for the most part, has been great. The beach is close and we were lucky enough to borrow some kayaks and go paddling out around the cliffs to some near by beaches.


Whitianga on the right, Ferry Landing on the left
[davetracker.com file photo]




We hung out around here for several days. On Monday, we went down to Cathedral Cove:,

I'll just note that I'm feeling a little out of sorts. First of all, there's a bit of culture shock -- it's strange being back in the first world, eating first world food and all that. I wasn't prepared for how good the wine would be, though! My laptop is acting up. Seems that it's having some strange problems powering up, especially after a "suspend." It's a Sony Vaio, and I was warned indirectly. At least it's under and extended warranty and I can eventually get it fixed in the states. The Sony people say they might be able to help here.

And I seem to be fighting off a bit of a crud -- hard to take in the middle of summer! Bitch, piss, whine, moan. No, really, it's fine.