Melbourne

First things first: 3 weeks in Australia and no animals noticeably tried to kill me. Good game, well played. Now, to the rest of things:

Who in the world doesn't like Melbourne? It's been rated as the #1 most livable city in the world, as my friend Erin tells me, and I can see why. 

While Sydney reminded me a lot of a cross between San Francisco and LA, Melbourne reminds me of Chicago. I guess I should frame that with a disclaimer on my experiences in Chicago, of which I have two:

1. Around age 12, on my first ever cross-country flight by myself to see an old middle school friend. My dad managed to book me a flight with a 4 hour layover in O'Hare Airport, from 2-6AM. I found a Cinnabon in the terminal, ordered three of them, and ate until it was time to board my plane.

2. Around age 23, over a weekend for a bachelor party. Probably not the best state to judge a city.

But I'll stick by my unqualified assessment that Melbourne reminds me of a less windy, warmer Chicago. Something about the grace of the buildings, framed by the riverfront, and the beautiful public park areas. We'll go with that.

There are several things about the city that are awesome, and here's an incomplete list of some of my favorite things about Melbourne:

1. The People

You may remember Erin from my previous post on the Milford Track. I met her and her friend Amelia on the boat at the start of the track, and I walked with them for the whole way. Well Erin lives in Melbourne, and she was nice enough to take me in for a few nights when I arrived in the city. Erin was an amazing host, she took me to dinner in Melbourne's Chinatown, to Southbank to watch the nightly fire display, and on a walking tour through the entire CBD and beyond. She and her cousin Emma took me to see the Pierce Brothers, an incredible local music duo who were performing at a nearby social club. It's such a nice feeling to be half a world away from home, and yet to sleep and feel welcome in an actual apartment, not just a revolving door of people like a hostel.

Shrine of Remembrance, during our city tour walk

The nightly fire show on Southbank

2. The Architecture

I love being in a city for the buildings. There's always something to look up at, some sign to read, some historical significance to every block. Melbourne's architecture was amazing to me because its as if the city just skipped the 60s's entirely. You know, those ugly cement monstrosities every city in America has, that sprang up sometime in the middle of the last century? Melbourne has none. It's just gorgeous old buildings with amazing stonework, right next to gleaming steel and glass. I spent my last night in Melbourne walking around at dusk snapping pictures of all the pretty buildings I saw.

3. The Queen Victoria Market

Once I finally stopped being a couch-borne nuisance at Erin's place, I checked into a hostel right next to the Queen Victoria market. So cool. Hundreds of vendors selling cheap goods and fruit. I ate myself sick of kiwi fruit over a few days there, and it only cost me a few Aussie dollars.

4. Coffee Shops and Books

As my trip has worn on, I've developed a neat little habit of spending the day in a coffee shop with a good book and powering through it. You might argue that I could do that in San Francisco, or anywhere. Probably right. But I felt like doing it in Melbourne, and I feel great about that decision. I had a restful week in Melbourne, saving up what's left of my travel energy for my final stop.

Fiji. I left Melbourne early this morning, and as I write this I'm sweating in the Fijian humid heat outside of Nadi. Tomorrow morning I'm catching a boat out to a nearby island, and I'll be island hopping for the next 5 days until Sunday, when I catch a plane home. Internet is sparse in these parts, and I'm going to enjoy putting the iPad and phone away for a while.

So that makes this probably the last blog update before I get home and unleash a big retrospective post about what I've learned, and all that fun stuff. Thanks to everyone who's been reading along my adventures, I promise there are many more to come!

Cheers,

Jared

East Coast Odyssey

This will not be a short post. I'll do my best to break up the wall of text with pictures though, and I think I've got a few fun ones here.

The airport in Gold Coast is small enough that you exit the airplane via stairs down to the Tarmac. I don't know why, but that's one of my favorite things while traveling. Something about actually walking out of the airplane to the ground feels so much more adventurous than walking into the gently-sloped carpeted tube that connects to the airplane door. Not sure why, just a thing I noticed.

Surfers Paradise wasn't really my scene. I'd venture to guess the median age was about 19 on Saturday night, which still strikes me as bizarre that they're allowed to drink. Drinking in a bar with 18 year olds makes me feel ancient. I start thinking of movies that were released before they were born, and after that I just can't stop myself. Jurassic Park, for example. That movie was my childhood. It's also been out for 20 years. Man.

Another note about drinking in Australia: bouncers here are mean. Not that I've personally had any trouble with them, but more that at any given bar they seem to be far more anxious to fight than the patrons. I've seen more people forcefully removed from bars in the last week than in the last several years.

I moved on from Surfers Paradise to Byron Bay the next morning. Great decision. Byron Bay is a beautiful, quiet beach town with a bohemian 60's vibe to it. I spent my day in Byron lounging on the beach and reading. I spent the night drinking in the hostel with new friends, learning new rules to drinking games. On the strength of that quality day I decided to extend my stay in Byron by another day, and spent it in exactly the same way.

Just another day in Byron Bay

When I grudgingly left Byron, I caught an early morning Greyhound bus to Brisbane. I'd heard mind reviews of Brisbane, with several people telling me to not bother, and some telling me it was a great little spot. I settled on 2 days, to give me proper time to explore the city and visit some recommended places. First impression of Brisbane: there are a lot of bridges, and several of those bridges are hideous. I didn't take any photos of the city, because I was on a mission. My cousin Katarina had recommended I make a visit to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, for the chance to hold a koala. Best recommendation ever.

Here is a prom picture of me with a koala. Best day ever.

I don't think I can rave enough about how amazing Lone Pine was. For starters, my admission was $24 with my student ID (thanks again for not putting dates on those things, USC!) whereas the larger and more popular Australia Zoo costs $86. Holding the koala was only $16 extra. And that was only the start to an amazing day. Next up after the Koala Meet n' Greet: Birds of Prey Feeding!

For half an hour, trainers put several beautiful raptors through their paces in exchange for bits of food or mice. I spent the entire time mesmerized and trying to take as many well timed pictures as possible.

This one is my favorite.

After the birds show, I walked around to all the exhibits and took pictures of all sorts of furry and feathered creatures I remember reading about as a kid. Kookaburras, dingoes, wombats, platypuses, cassowaries: the gang's all here. I spent about 30 seconds in the reptile room before an Eastern Brown Snake (second deadliest snake in the world) took a look at me and I ran away because why tempt fate?

This is the look a dingo gives you when it wants you to stop taking pictures.

Of course, I left two signature animals of Australia out of the previous list: kangaroos and emus. Lone Pine has a separate enclosure, where hundreds of kangaroos hop around with a few emus. For $2, you can buy some kangaroo food and make some new friends.

Administering a bribe

Took a selfie with my buddy Rodney the Kangaroo

Staring contest results: Jared 1, Emu 0

Best day ever. Best zoo ever. Cannot recommend it enough. Get yourselves to Brisbane and hang out with my cool new friends.

Sadly, I had to leave eventually, and I returned to the hostel to meet my roomies and relax. The nights in Brisbane were uneventful, but good for the ol' budget. I found myself in a bit of a travel quandary. You see, the east coast of Australia is dotted with amazing sand islands, rainforest, and beach towns. The traditional way for car-less travelers to navigate the coast is via Greyhound bus, in the form of a few 12-15 hour trips. My dilemma was this: while it would let me see more of the coast, travel by bus is more expensive and would require me investing a few more of my precious travel days sitting uncomfortably and waiting to get somewhere.

I talked things over with my nonexistent traveling partners, and made the executive decision to catch a flight straight out of Brisbane to Cairns, the northernmost big town on Australia's east coast. Did I miss out by skipping the bus? Sure. Do I regret it? Nope.

Cairns is amazing. I showed up on Thursday night and had a big night out with the new roommates courtesy of cheap boxed wine. The hostel I'm at, Gilligan's, is essentially a resort with bunk beds. There's a market and a club downstairs, and the rooms are absolutely the nicest of any I've stayed in on this trip. Friday morning the roommates and I took a trip down to the man-made lagoon to relax and lay out in the sun for a bit, before I headed off to read and have a quiet night. Not that a quiet night was really possible with the bass from the downstairs club. Live by the sword, die by the sword I suppose.

I had a quiet Friday night because I had an early morning appointment Saturday: snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef! The boat left the harbor at around 8:30am, through 2 hours of choppy sea to our first dive spot, Paradise Reef. I joined up with a few other solo travelers to rent a waterproof digital camera and defray costs.

Looking goofy in my stinger suit

Graceful: never a good word to describe me.

Going to find some fishes

My first impressions of snorkeling: I suck at it, and I need to work on my cardio. During the first snorkel period, I was constantly gasping for breath and hyperventilating if I tried to snorkel for too long. I stuck it out, because the coral was just too beautiful to miss.

Fortunately, on the second dive next to the white sand of Michaelmas Cay, I switched out for a new mask and snorkel. I could breathe! Turns out that even though I could still use some cardio work, I'm not quite as out of shape as I feared the first time. Blame faulty equipment, but I had a way better experience the second time.

Having an ok day, I guess.

Underwater kicked in the head!

Now here is a picture I took of a fish:

That's a nice looking fish. See, my dive buddies and I were lamenting the fact that we had no decent pictures of marine life, outside of coral. I had the camera, and decided I'd get some good pictures of cool looking fish. I snorkeled around for a few minutes, and found this little guy. I decided to dive and catch a good picture.

If you know me, you can probably guess how that went. I dove, and two things happened immediately: 1) I tried to breathe through my snorkel, which is a poor idea with your head underwater 2) I kicked my left fin off. I got the one picture, and kicked straight back up towards breathable oxygen and my stupid floating fin. I was a sight to see, struggling to tread water while coughing and holding aloft a camera and a fin. It's a good look, I swear. Eventually I got myself sorted and made my way back toward the boat, for a couple more quick dives before we departed.

Come back fish I want a picture.

After a few more unsuccessful attempts at a picture with those big fish, I headed back aboard the ship for the arduous journey back to Cairns.

Arduous journey, he says.

Saturday night was a quiet night as well, thanks to my rapidly depleting funds and being a little worn out from the reef. At about midnight, I booked myself onto an all day tour for Sunday of the Tablelands near Cairns.

Again, amazing. I feel like this post could be three distinct posts about Lone Pine, the Great Barrier Reef, and Barefoot Tours, but I didn't have enough time in between to write all of this down. The tour group was a really fun time, and we got to see a lot of wonderful tucked away spots in the forest.

The Cathedral fig tree. For scale reference, it's 44m around.

We also stopped at several picturesque waterfalls, an event from which I don't think my towel will ever recover. I stopped taking pictures mostly because the tour guide was taking several, and I decided I'd just bum those off of him later and enjoy the experience camera free for the day.

Fine, one more waterfall picture. That's it.

After a great day with the group, we headed back to Cairns and several of us met up again for a big night on the town, or as big as a Sunday will allow. That explains why my head was sore this morning, and I spent my last full day in Cairns in bed reading.

Last full day in Cairns? Yep. Tomorrow I'm flying off to Melbourne! It's also the start to my very last week in Australia, but lets not talk about that right now.

Cheers,

Jared

Sydney

I've now spent 3 days in Australia and none of the animals have killed me. So I've got that going for me, which is nice.

On Wednesday I caught a 7pm flight out of Auckland and by the time I made it to Sydney I was thoroughly exhausted. Though I'd like to think I did a pretty good job understanding Kiwi accents, my tired ears just weren't fully prepared for a full on Aussie drawl. Things got a bit dicey at the customs desk, when the inspector apparently asked me "Why are you visiting?" I heard a slightly garbled "Where are you staying?" and responded nonchalantly with the name of my first hostel, "Hump Backpackers." Whoops. Turns out even English speaking countries have a language barrier. But the agent got a great laugh out of that, and he hadn't stopped chuckling by the time he finished checking my bag.

I checked into my hostel and fell right to sleep. Partially that was the plan to leave me energized and refreshed for a day out in Sydney, but mostly I was just completely exhausted. Either way, smashing success! Thursday was a beautiful day for exploring, and I spent the entire day giving myself a thorough walking tour of the city.

Awesome fountain in Kings Cross

I walked through the Royal Botanical gardens, and made a great show of looking at trees, fountains, flowers, and birds. Which I'm told is what you're supposed to do in those sort of places.

I was pretty close to grilling up one of these little fellas for dinner. It's hard to find turkey here.

Sweet looking tree

I walked north through the gardens and came to a beautiful building: the Sydney Opera House! It's weird, but sometimes it's easy to forget I'm traveling somewhere so very far away from home. But then I see something so fantastic that it reminds me where I am and why I'm here, and I get a huge burst of adrenalin, some sort of traveler's high. Standing next to the Sydney Opera house was one of those moments. I proceeded to make a fool out of myself in classic tourist fashion by asking several other visitors to take a hundred very similar pictures of me.

I walked around Circular Quay to the other side of the harbor, and continued my embarrassing display of tourism.

Well I think we can all agree that's enough of that for now. Stunning building, beautiful harbor. Absolutely can't wait to see it again one day. I continued my walking tour, aided by my trusty free city map I picked up at the airport. I walked under the Harbor Bridge, and south to Darling Harbor, another picturesque wharf area packed with tourist attractions I'm too cheap to spend money on. I crossed the harbor and made my way even farther west to the Sydney Fish Market, where I stopped for an expensive but well-earned lunch.

Darling Harbor

The Fish Market was a mad house

Fountain in Darling Harbor

After the fish market, I retraced my way through the harbor and took a shortcut though the heart of Sydney to get back towards King's Cross, where I had my luggage stored. Note: stored, not where I was staying. See, I excitedly booked my flight to Sydney, then looked online and noticed that not one single hostel had room for me for 3 days. There's a massive concert called Stereosonic in Sydney this weekend, and the hostels were jam-packed. I was fortunate to find the last beds available at 3 separate hostels for each of the 3 nights I planned to spend in town.

I schlepped my gear from Kings Cross to Chinatown, and settled into the new hostel. I'll say this about Sydney's hostels, they don't hold a candle to New Zealand. While the rest of the city absolutely charmed me, the hostels give off a very New York-ish "cram as many people as you can into the space over a McDonald's" vibe. Oh well, at least it's a bed to sleep in.

I met up with my buddy Dave, who I met on my first pass though Wellington, for a few Thursday night drinks and some catching up. While I was with Dave, I got a friendly message from my next hostel. There was a problem with their booking system, and many of the reservations booked in the past few days were redundant or for beds that didn't exist. In other words, here's a refund, no room for you. Crud. Fortunately, my buddy Dave, who should be knighted for this, offered up a spot to stay at his folks house so I wouldn't have to sleep on a park bench or worse, buy a hotel room.

Day 2 in Sydney was a lot shorter than Day 1, thanks to some inclement weather. My plan for the day was to catch a train down to Bondi Junction and spend some time at Bondi Beach, Sydney's biggest beach on the south shore. The rain clouds had other ideas. Rather than force a miserable rainy beach day, I punted and spent some quality time in coffee shops watching pictures of amazing Thanksgiving food and festivities scroll across my Facebook. I'd have been a bit upset if Day 3 followed with more rain and didn't let me hit the beach, but it worked out just fine. 

At Dave's house I was treated to an amazing home-cooked meal and the chance for a proper shower, which was amazing after spending so much time in hostels. Friday night Dave and I went out for a few too many in the Newtown district of Sydney, so Saturday morning got off to a very slow start. Fortunately Dave's dad decided to be my tour guide for the day, and spent the morning whisking us around to Sydney's five south side beaches. The scenery is unbelievable, just pristine white sand bookended by sharp cliffs. 

We did the entire coast, south to north, and ended at Bondi Beach. We had lunch at an awesome restaurant called Bondi Beach Icebergs, which has an amazing view of the beach.

Not too shabby.

After lunch we went down for a swim at the beach, and I managed to gt a petty good start on my first Australian sunburn! Stoked for that.

Bondi

Lifeguarding

Once I was good and crispy, we headed out again for a bit more Sydney sightseeing, and then we hurried back to their house to pack my bag and head to the airport. I caught the 7pm flight to the Gold Coast, and I'm now relaxing in a place called Surfer's Paradise. The vibe around here seems like sort of a Vegas/Miami for drunk high schoolers, which explains why I'm sitting here typing this up instead of socializing, I hope.

Another crazy day starts soon. I have no plan and I'm fine with that. Happy Thanksgiving to all you folks back home, see you guys soon!

Cheers,

Jared

Outward Bound

24 hours from now I'll be on a plane bound for Sydney, Australia. Out of Auckland, out of New Zealand, a country I've come to appreciate and even love over the past 2.5 months. I wanted to write a retrospective, to list all the life lessons I've learned, all the fascinating phrases I've picked up and used, but for some reason I can't write that right now. Maybe later. Maybe never, but that's an awful long time.

The good folks at the Aussie Department of Immigration and Border Protection (which is mildly ironic when you think of the country as a former prison colony) decided to grant me a tourist visa this afternoon. I've known for weeks that I'd like to extend my trip into a brief Aussie foray, and I've been quietly googling my way through other people's itineraries, scoping for ideas. So I booked a flight immediately, for tomorrow evening. After all, that's part of the reason I've stuck around Auckland.

So what was the hold-up with the visa? Well government offices are typically closed on weekends, and I only applied for it on Saturday. If that surprises you, then you definitely don't know me well. How did you find my blog?

Anyhow, before I get into the new travel plans, an update on my time in Auckland as an adopted tourist! On Sunday my friend Charlotte picked me up and took me to the North Shore, a lovely bit of suburb that's across the harbor from the bustling CBD. The weather has been beautiful since I arrived, and we were able to get some beach time before the sun started to cook me through the rather lacking ozone layer.

North Shore, completely forget the name of the beach though. My bad.

Had another quiet night, a drink and some quality frozen yogurt, and made plans with a different new friend to explore one of the black sand beaches out to the west of Auckland. After all, at this point I was at the mercy of the Aussie consulate, and I figured I might as well enjoy myself as I waited for their all important yea or nay to me crossing the border of their country.

So Monday morning we took a drive out to Bethells Beach, just north of Piha, the more popular but also more crowded surfer beach. Here's a series of three pictures, showing why you should always go to the beach on Mondays while everyone else is working.

Yowza.

Auckland gets a bit of a bad rap with tourists traveling the country, and I think I know why. You get off the plane, and the shuttle dumps you in the CBD, where you find your hostel. The CBD is a business district, and though there are parties to be found, it's no Queenstown where the bars essentially spill out onto the streets. This is a fully functioning city, and I wouldn't expect a tourist to immediately catch on here any more than I'd expect a Kiwi dumped in the Tenderloin to stumble their way to 16th and Mission in SF. 

Once you meet people though, that makes all the difference. Kiwis will bend over backwards to accommodate anyone friendly, they're just wonderful like that. And I've had a much, much better time since I've been in this city and had people to show me around and sightsee. Just my 2 cents, which would be rounded out of any Kiwi transaction because their money doesn't go lower than 10 cents.

I promised you all the exciting travel bits! And I won't disappoint by omitting them. But first, a story about my flight into NZ, which I neglected to mention because I didn't want the NZ version of the INS to track me down and deport me. You see, websites are misleading. And my grand plan was to take off to NZ with a one way ticket, and come home when I was good and ready and poor. On the surface that jives with the NZ immigration website, but the big gate agent at SFO seemed differently informed, and indelicately refused to give me a boarding pass without a return ticket.

So, having just said goodbye to both my parents at the International terminal, I was faced with the option of either booking a flight home on a random day, or calling my folks and telling them to circle around the parking structure and pick me back up. I chose the former, and booked a ticket home for December 5th, next Thursday. I was given my visa, boarded my flight, flew to Auckland, checked into the hostel, had a nap and a coffee, and then canceled the return flight with 2 hours remaining on a 24-hour cancellation window. Style points for me.

So let that be a lesson for you: countries don't tend to let you travel into them without proof that you'll also be leaving. Extending that to my current situation, I know full well that Australia won't let me get my first Southern Hemisphere sunburn without a flight out. So I've booked a flight, out of Melbourne, on December 17th. To Nadi, Fiji. Where I'll be staying for a few days until I fly home to San Francisco on December 22nd, just in time for Christmas so my dear mother doesn't have to chase me around the world and take me home by force. Also, because I miss my family and friends, and I'm really looking forward to Christmas at home. But also that first reason. Love you mom!

That's life for me right now. It's weird to think that after all the dreaming, planning, and doing, I've got less than 24 hours left on this gorgeous island. Seems crazy how it all flew by, but I've got so many great memories to share in the coming weeks and months, and so many to keep just for me.

I don't really want to leave. But a lot of the joy I've found on this trip has been by pushing through comfort and finding even more wonderful things. In that spirit I'm saying goodbye to New Zealand. For now. Let's just call it "See you sooner than later."

Cheers,

Jared

 

Back to the Start

The weeks when I don't have time to update the blog are always the legendary ones.

River Valley never disappoints. I was able to finagle myself a quasi-similar working arrangement to last time, and this time I even brought my own beer to save money at the bar. I spent my days helping out the 2 current slaves at their duties, and my nights hanging out and trading stories with the staff. During the day on Sunday, my last day in the valley, I was able to take a hike across the river to get a whole new perspective on the lodge.

As amazing as ever.

On my last night there the staff threw down the drinking gauntlet. Conveniently, that was also the night I broke out my new panda-face tank top, which is now pretty much my most-prized possession. We partied the night away, and the next day I hopped in a car with a few of the raft guides to leave the valley for the last time. I caught a ride with the guides to Taupo, my planned next stop, and hung out with them for the night until they had to get back to work.

I found my way to a hostel, and was put into Room 18, a room which will live in infamy. My first day was uneventful, and I called it an early night because I'd set up my last New Zealand hike for the next morning: the Tongariro Alpine Crossing!

The Tongariro Alpine Crossing is a shortened version of the Tongariro Alpine Circuit, another one of NZ's great walks. It's a 19km day hike across an otherworldly volcanic landscape, which includes Mount Ngauruhoe, otherwise known as Mount Doom from The Lord of the Rings movies. I joined up with a crew of four other hostel guests who were heading to the trek as well. The bus to the base of the mountain picked us up from the hostel at 5:30am, and got us started at the mountain by 7am. The bus started us from the valley below Mt Doom and Mt Tongariro at 7am, just as the clouds surrounding the mountain peaks were starting to break.

A few kilometers in, the valley steepened into a rock face with an unending set of wooden steps, called the Devil's Staircase. After an exhausting hour on nature's stairmaster, we made it to the South Crater, a vast flat brown wasteland framed by Mt Doom to the South and Mt Tongariro to the North. The Ngauruhoe summit walk is more challenging, but when we made it to the trailhead the mountain's peak was still heavily covered in clouds, so we pressed on.

The ridge we hiked out of the South Crater

When we made it to the trailhead for the Tongariro summit, the clouds were finally starting to clear and we hoped they'd let us have a good view once we got there.

Hanging out on the summit of Mt Tongariro

The clouds cleared for about 15 minutes, giving us time for some great shots of the surrounding volcanoes and craters.

Then the clouds rolled back in suddenly. Let's just say visibility was temporarily reduced.

Uh, OK then

We made our way back from the summit, and continued the trek to the next crazy beautiful natural wonders: the Red Crater and the Emerald Lakes.

This crater is absolutely massive. The photo doesn't do it justice.

If I'm not making goofy faces I'm not taking pictures

Blue sky next to Emerald lake

We left the lakes and continued our walk out of the valley, and away from the main volcanic summits. After a long walk, we left the lifeless crater land for the highlands, and a valley that showed us the long way down.

The walk down was long and relatively easy on everything but my knees. We finished at 1:30pm, and waited for the bus back to the hostel.

An active volcano demonstrating how clouds are made

I spent most of the second half of the hike convincing my hiking buddies to join me for my traditional post-hike burger, which mostly consisted of all of us salivating at the prospect of a great meal. Wednesday night in the hostel was a ridiculous experience, especially considering we'd been hiking all day. I've had some awesome hostel roommates throughout this trip, but Room 18 at the Taupo Urban Retreat was out of this world. 8 people, and all of us got along and had an awesome few days together. We started drinking at 8:30, and by around 11 we were ready for a very drunken stumble to the Taupo Hot Pools, a natural hot spring that feels just like a hot tub with a waterfall.

Thursday was a day of coffee and some distracted book reading (working on The Poisonwood Bible now), capped off with a Room 18 taco feast and beer pong. We ended the night with a showing of Iron Man 3.

Friday morning I said goodbye to my new friends and caught the most unpleasant bus ride of my life to  Auckland, the city where it all started. The bus ride was not-so-fun for a few key reasons:

1. The bus was 100% full.

2. It was the hottest day of my entire NZ trip

3. The air conditioning wasn't working, because of course

So I spent 6 hours in the back row of a hot bus, wedged between a window and a very large lady, with a reclined seat in my face and the intense desire to be anywhere else in the world. All was better when I finally made it to Auckland and took a much needed nap.

On Friday night Lisa, my friend from Queenstown and an Auckland native, had invited me to a flat-warming party for her coworkers in order to show me that Auckland wasn't quite so drab as it seemed my first time through. Myth dispelled. I spent a fun night drinking and chatting in a room where I was probably the least educated person, as everyone else was a lawyer. I also played more than my fair share of beer pong, and had an excellent time in general. I'll say this for Auckland, the locals are a ton of fun once you get to know them.

Which brings us to today, Saturday. I woke up and walked outside, face to face with Auckland's Civic Theater, which is showing the Broadway musical Wicked. One of my Room 18 folks had informed me that a couple hours before every show the box office has a raffle for a small supply of $35 tickets. I showed up and threw in my name. I didn't win.

However, the raffle was for up to 2 tickets, and me being alone I only entered for 1. At the end of the raffle, the lady in charge realized they had only one ticket left, and wanted to know if anyone in the crowd was looking for just a single ticket. In the middle of a whole bunch of grumpy looking couples, there's me with my hand up. Yup, the only one. So I got the $35 ticket anyway!

Awesome!

First row, I was basically in the orchestra pit

Wicked was fantastic. I've been listening to the soundtrack for years, and it was nice to finally put an order to the songs and a face to the voices. Glenda stole the show with an incredible performance, and the whole cast was amazing. That's money well spent on one of my last few days in New Zealand.

Whaaaaaa? My last few days in New Zealand? Yeah. More to come on that in a couple days once I've got everything sorted!

Cheers,

Jared

How's that for a cliffhanger? (Bad puns are my life)