Finally I can talk about New Zealand in all its glory. Easter holiday has given me the opportunity to travel outside off Auckland and see the beautiful countryside. I decided to make a last minute booking to see Taupo and do the Tongariro crossing! Who says atheists can't appreciate religious traditions? Regretfully none of my roommates could come though.
Oh yeah, I have roommates now. It happened shortly before I decided to take up bike riding. OK, so I haven’t been updating my blog in awhile. Let me start from where I left off.
OK, so, at the time when I was still living with my Grandparents and when my taste for pre cooked sausages and weet bix & watermelon wasn’t a full blown addiction, I managed to live a pretty stable & repetitive lifestyle. Eat. Sleep. Work. Repeat. That all changed when Granddad and I went to one of his friends place to watch him brew beer. Holy crap, I’ve been doing it all wrong. He did everything from scratch; heating the raw grains with 67 degree C water, growing his own yeast, moving 50L silo’s with motor driven chains… it was amazing! I decided right then and there that I needed a house where I could duplicate this magic. A home with a large enough backyard to transform into a brewing factory. A house with roommates relaxed enough to ignore the occasional explosion. I found that house. It’s in Waterview with 2 other Kiwi Uni students; Elliot and Nicole, and 1 German; Sebastian. The place is in a pretty good location too because it’s far enough that rent is cheap ($160/week) but close enough to bike to work. Ah! Bike riding! There is a direct bike path which begins from my house and leads directly to the AECOM office. The only downside about the house is that there is no internet!! I guess taking 2 weeks to install a basic utility is an inefficiency I’ll have to get used to in New Zealand. In my desperation to browse Facebook and watch YouTube videos of puppies I drained all the data on my phone on the first day. On that same day, my roommates and I decided to go to a pub to enjoy a good beer together. It occurred to me as I was asking the bartender what the WiFi password was that I have a serious internet problem. I mean, replace “internet” in that story with literally any other substance and people relaxing voices and white clothes would be picking me up and dropping me off at the nearest rehab. I’m not concerned about my addition to the internet though - the router should be working within a week. I’m also thinking of getting the Samsung Galaxy S7 soon too so my phobia of being out of touch with the rest of societies technological standards will be temporarily subsided. Oh yeah, I might start up a video blog with this new phone - so yeah, brace yourselves for that.
OK, now I can start talking about Taupo. This Easter break gave me 4 beautiful days to explore as much of NZ as I can. I booked a last minute lodge in Taupo (it was last minute because doing stuff without internet is hard) and set off to Hitchhike down Taupo. Once I realized that waiting by the onramp to the motorway wasn’t working, I caved and purchased a $29 bus down to Taupo. As soon as I arrived I made friends with a young Scottish couple and 2 elderly South Africans in their 50’s. The South Africans were so transparently racist it was disturbing. I knew better than to argue with highly opinionated old men, so I let them rant about how blacks were really just another breed of Chimpanzee until they fell asleep. Once the racists were all tuckered out, I had a chance to explore the town. It’s beautiful, the lake is wonderful and the town is very spread out and disconnected giving it a tranquil country vibe. Funnely enough, I realized while walking around that I had been here once before when I was working for Schlumberger. I’ve probably already written a brief post about this 3 years ago!
The next day I payed $65 to get a shuttle bus there and back from the Tongariro Alpine crossing. I woke up at 5:00am, hiked both optional peaks (I can’t remember their formal names, but one of them was Mt. Doom!) and met a bunch of people.
Once again, I got an extreme case of total bliss talking to several groups consisting of Americans, Canadians, Dutch, French (well, technically New Caledonian) and Polish. It saddens me a little that they were all backpackers so I can’t develop any long term friendships with them.
Traveling back to Auckland was a lot of fun. I woke up super early and tried hitchhiking again. I figured my luck would be much better going from Taupo to Auckland than the reverse, and I was right. After 1 hour I got a lift by two friendly parents who insisted on telling me every possible fact about about New Zealand and their 4 children. Fun fact #1: Kiwi Fruit grows on vines and was first called ‘chinese gooseberry’. They dropped me off at Tauranaga where I easily caught another ride by a very intelligent (and somewhat obnoxious) Australian software developer all the way back to Auckland.
I'll talk about work and roommates in another post! Right now I'm super tired :D
