auckland, nz

Ok, so I landed in Auckland at around 6am and figured that I'd sort of walk around the city that day and get a feel for it and then travel out to the country for the rest of my time here.

The trip started off on a down note as I was held by customs b/c I didn't have proof of a ticket leaving the country. Apparently they've made this new law that just came into effect 40ish yrs ago that if you're going to a foreign country, you need to show that you have a ticket to leave the country as well. Anyways, they interrogated me, looked through my bag and other than few costco t-shirts and socks, realized i didn't have anything that interesting so they just let me go.

I got to the city and started looking around for a place to stay and to leave my bag. I finally found a place called Kiwi Hostel. I basically stayed there b/c I thought it was a funny name. a person from new zealand is called a "kiwi" so when i saw that name i thought of it being equivalent to a hotel in america called "white people hostel" although after thinking about it for about 10 seconds, i realized that it's not the same at all.

Anyways, i walked around the city for most of the day. I had a good time walking around the city since it was pretty nice outside but the city itself is really pretty boring. There are the a few restaurants and that's it. Also, the hills here are incredibly steep and everything is a hill so it's hard to walk around for so long. There's a small downtown-ish area that's right on the harbor which is nice. The coolest thing about Auckland is the color of the water. It's basically turquoise and is totally different than anything i've seen before in NY/LA/Bahamas, etc. But other than that, the city is really lame. It has a few restaurants and that's about it. most of my day was spent walking up a hill to get to my hotel and then walking around looking for food.

Since NZ is really famous for being a beautiful country and not necessarily for its cities, I'm going to get on a bus in about an hour to Rotarua. I have no idea what's there but I think they have some native culture stuff and some hot springs/volcano stuff. I don't really know much about it, but it's a 4 hr bus ride so i figured it'd be a good way to see the countryside. I met some ppl last night at my hostel (one of whom was actually from california, and so of course I said I was a native californian as well) who said it was a good place to go so I figured I'd listen to them.

the population that lives here doesn't seem that diverse. From what i've seen it's mostly ppl who are native NZ'ers, asians and white ppl with the asians being the most common. the positive about that is that you can find cheap sushi. Also, ppl here are reaaaally ugly. in comparison, brandeis girls suddenly don't look as terrible as they once did.