Back in North Island (NZ)

Taking advantage of a rainy day in Vanuatu (there's a hint of what my next posts are going to be about) I take the chance to refresh a bit the look of the blog, and add to it new pics, a poll and some links (all on the right nav bar for your convenience). A mid-year resolution for me is also to update the blog more frequently.. I'm unemployed after all, should have loads of free time (you can make your voice heard on the frequency topic on the forementioned poll on the right).

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.

Auckland and TGIM, like the good auld days

After few hours I arrived in New Zealand a couple of notions struck me: how skinny my good friend (and ex-colleague, and TGIM co-founder) Finbarr had become, and how similar NZ is to Ireland. While the first notion will be explained by pics, the second one needs some more elaboration. So here it is: 4 million people in each country, 1.5 live in the main city. Both islands, both living next to a big powerful country they hate (UK/Australia). Lots of green landscapes, cliffs, sheep, rain (although they have a summer in NZ, and in whatever season the sun comes out is always scorching). As a consequence same t-shirts with jokes about rain and sheep available is same touristic shops. Drinking is the national sport in both countries, followed by rugby. They both have a language which they're trying to keep alive. Drunken boys driving despite the booze and drunken girls in miniskirt despite the weather populates the roads of both countries, especially at weekends.

And so here I am, following the rule that says that if you travel too far you might end up at the starting point. Or maybe I was getting too used to tropical jungles, tropical cultures and tropical weathers (back to usual 20 to 15 C here, an Irish summer if you want). Still it's being a great experience. First of all is fantastic to catch up with old friends, exchange travel tips and have proper old-fashioned TGIMs. In fact not only i'm a guest in Finbarr's and Sharon's, I also had the chance to meet Libor and Jenny, and hear their travel adventures too. Inevitably we ended up talking about gossips at work and Google's products, with great boredom of Sharon, the only non googler.

And as we're in a country similar to Ireland we ended up having many Dublin-style nights out, characterized by a lot of drinking and days spent sleeping until late afternoon instead of sightseeing or visiting museums. Pics for your eyes only available. We managed however to squeeze in some cultural highlight: the Villa Maria Winery tour. Learnt about few differences between the way wine is produced here and in Europe, between cork, plastic cork and screws, and how to use fish bladder to filter wine.
While I'm here i might as well make the most of it, so next stop is the South Island. Like in Ireland with Dublin, they say the real NZ is the one outside Auckland, so let's go and have a look. Incredible scenic train routes, glaciers and landscapes (and more sav blanc now that I'm an expert after the “cultural tour”) are apparently waiting to be discovered there, so let's not keep them waiting too long. Laters...