We Made It

We've made it Auckland, which is great. Our flight arrived first thing yesterday morning and, all in all, it went decently. Shandelle did manage to get cramped in about 10 hours in the flight so I galantly exchanged seats with her. Her seat was in coach and I can vouch that it did suck.

Our motel is in a quaint little area about a mile outside of downtown. It's great because 1) it's darn cheap (equivalent to 30$US a night) and outside of the touristy inner city/backpacker area of town. We've had two great breakfasts in the area (Ponsonby), which is very similar to the Marina district in San Francisco.

Yesterday, we managed to see some great sights with my friend Hunter and his fiancee. They had to leave this morning, sadly. We'll be able to connect with them again in Australia. People tend to "Wow" when we say that we're doing this for 3 months. Hunter & Mrs. Hunter are doing this for a year. That's real dedication. I feel like a poser in comparison.

Shandelle is sunburned for the first time since I've known her. I'm slightly sunburned, but I don't look funny like her. She got mad when I called her "Rudolph" in front of a group of Japanese tourists yesterday. We're trying to be more responsible today.

The highlight of the day was the tour through the America's Cup pavilion and seeing all the racing boats. Only Alinghi (some Swiss dudes) and Oracle/BMW (Larry Ellison's team) remain out of a field of nearly a dozen. They're fighting to see who gets to go against the Kiwi's (Team New Zealand) in February for the Cup itself. The boats are tugged in and out of a little harbor and we managed to see them return after the race.

Sailing is not such a great spectator sport, which is probably why the events so often include heaving drinking of Champagne. We're looking into going out on a charter to watch later this week. We also met a nice person on the plane who is doing some business over here. So, we may drive over and hang out with her for a bit. We'll see.

Other than that, life is pretty normail in New Zealand. People eat, take the bus, hang out in Internet cafes, etc. There are little differences: the newspaper has a decidedly positive bent, the people have a more English manner of moving/walking than the Americans, and everything is basically half-price because the exchange rate is great. For example, our bus ride this morning was $1.20NZ. That's about 65 cents in the USA. Can't beat it.