But of course I take advantage of the rain to tell you about my return to the North Island of New Zealand. Two main chapters can be identified, relating to two periods of time and two different locations, Auckland and Rotorua. This might take two posts, so here's the first one; the Rotorua one coming soon.
Back in Auckland with Finbarr & Sharon.
More or less same crazy nights out till morning (the fact we never made it to the Auckland museum is a good proof) like my first stop here. The Globe, a dark scruffy club was the main venue for most nights, quite regularly followed by late drinks in The Fiddlers Irish pub, another scruffy place where on a very intense TGIM session we also bumped into the Stereophonics singer having a pint there. Some main differences from the first stop in Auckland were the fact that we got to observe the young backpackers life in NZ (especially Irish ones), and me winning a Foosball tournament.
Regarding the first point the lesson learnt there is avoid at all cost the Kiwi Experience tours, unless your in your 20s and the country you're visiting is not too important compared to booze and shagging. I dont mind those last activities myself, but I wouldn't like to be put on a bus and carried around with these guys deciding what I see, where I sleep and what i eat. You can find so many travel blogs on the internet regarding NZ, and they all mention the same places, same attractions, same hostels and same wild nights in the same hostels. As at the beginning without knowing all this I was tempted to hop on one of those green buses myself, I was very grateful indeed to my instinct (and some internet reviews) that made me avoid that choice everytime I was in a town and the green buses arrived, creating a sort of “cruise ship” effect.
But let's move on to the Foosball tournament. Location: O'Carrolls Irish pub in city center. Technical standard: quite low, some people even spinning. 8 rounds in 8 weeks (sorry guys, gonna iss the final!)
You would play one vs one on a weirdly assembled but decent table. But hey, spirit of adaptation (and a few afternoon pints practicing with Finbarr before the tournament started) did it. The only big surprise was the old professional foosballer Finbarr, being unreasonably kicked out at the 3rd round. You might understand how personal and close to my heart it got when I met this guy at the final. No surprise instead that the prize of 50$ bar tab disappeared very very quickly in the heat of the celebrations. A great night alltogheter.
