Auckland

So after my first post i ended up getting into my room of 12 people... yeah, 12 people. So i explored the city a bit, got a cell phone (if you want the number let me know) and slept from 4pm until 12pm. I was woken up by two girls that came into the room and were like holy crap it smells like hell in here (not the exact words, but you get the idea) so I start talking to them and the one girl is telling me about the Kiwi buses that they have that run from city to city etc. So i have bought the Sheep Dog bus pass that will take me from Auckland to Christchurch and a ton of cities in between. I get to choose when i want to leave and how long I want to stay, the passes are really flexible and it gets me alot of discounts for stuff. So $500 well spent (i think) I think it was a good choice as renting a car was going to cost me a small fortune. I'm not sure how i am getting back to Auckland from christchurch yet... i have two months to think about it though... driving on the other side of the road will be an insane adventure.

So I've been hanging out with this girl kristen (the bus pass girl) and we went on this free Auckland tour yesterday and this bus took us all around and we visited the main attractions--which there aren't many-- auckland is kind of a blah city. not much to do or see really. I went to the harbor which was actually very cool. there are all these crazy huge yachts and boats. we did this bridge walk where we were strapped onto the underneath walkway of the harbor bridge and we watched people bungi jump off of it--no i didnt bungi jump-- i'm not sure that's really my thing, actually--Mom skip this part--i think skydiving is more my thing... i may do it at Taupo further down the north island. then we went to the Skytower which is this big building that overlooks the entire city and to all the outer islands, i got some great pics.

so Kristen left today and I may meet up with her in Rotorua (pronounced Ro-toe-ru-a) which is two cities away for me. Tomorrow i head for Mercury Bay which is along the south pacific ocean near the coramandel peninsula, I will probably stay a day then move on because I really want to get to Rotorua, Taupo & Wellington.

Surprisingly nothing crazy has happened yet, but it's only 10:40am here so the day is young. I feel like I have been here for so long already, it's only been like 3 days... that means it's definitely time to head to the next city. So off to Mercury Bay tomorrow at 8am.

NZ Time: Wednesday January 17, 2007 10:46am
USA Time: Tuesday January 16, 2007 4:47pm (kristi can you migrate some art in the 6pm for me?)