This diary thing has been working out pretty well. Let’s see. I left the bay area on 12 Nov, flying on Southwest from Oakland to LAX. Since I had a total layover of 5 hours, I agreed to meet Mike Polek for dinner. With some trepidation (it’s amazing how much of a lifeline a cell phone can mean now that I don’t have one) I took a bus as directed by Mike to a park-n-ride lot. Mike met me mere minutes later and we went off for Thai food. It was very nice to see him and catch up on life. Mike took me back to LAX and I went through security.

I killed an hour wandering through the duty free store. The plane left on time and I was fortunate enough to have an empty seat to my left and the aisle to my right. I gotta say, the seats on Air New Zealand are surprisingly comfortable (it seems they even won an award for ergonomics). The headrests have foldable wings to support your head while you sleep. I ate a second dinner on the plane, but only because I wanted to see how their airline food compared. Oh, and for the complimentary wine! I had a very nice sauvignon blanc. With the help of some Ambien, I was able to sleep for a few hours on the plane.

We landed at 5:30am local New Zealand time. A short wait in line and I was through passport control. I collected my pack at the baggage carousel, and ripped off the protective garbage bags. When faced with the choice of declaring things at customs or not, I decided to declare the 5 Balance Bars left over in my pack, since NZ has fairly strict food controls. The officer was not impressed, and I was waved straight through. The next problem was getting in to town. I gotta say, Auckland is very tourist-friendly when it comes to transportation. I took the AirBus from the airport and the driver dropped me off directly in front of the hostel (Auckland City YHA).

I couldn’t check-in right away since I got there too early. I relaxed for a couple of hours in the TV/social room. After I got my room key, I pulled out some things I would need for the day and took my backpack down to the basement where I put it in a big locker for $3/day. This turns out to have been a good move, since when I met my roomies later in the day one of them had has his entire pack stolen from the room the day before. The hostel changed the locks as soon as they heard about that. Since then, I’ve put my real valuables (passport, plane tickets, CD player) in a small locker for $1.50/day and left the pack in the room with just clothes and toiletries in it.

Of course, the first thing I had to do was walk down to Viaduct Basin and see what could be seen. I walked past KZ-1 and strolled past the megayachts docked there. I also found the mini-stadium where there’s a stage and a huge TV. When a race is on they pipe in OneSport. As you sit there watching you can look out over Syndicate Row and also watch the America’s Cup boats towing in and out for racing or practice. I watched Oracle (who broke their spinnaker pole on one run downwind) beat OneWorld. After that, I walked down Syndicate Row and poked my nose into a few of the shops that each syndicate has, looking for postcards and t-shirts, etc. I walked back up to the hostel and found Karangahape Road (aka K’ Rd) where I had a kebab for dinner. From walking around Auckland I can see that Turkish style kabobs are a very popular fast food choice, much like burritos are in California.

Friday morning saw me in the hostel basement doing laundry. While things were in the washer I went and found breakfast. While things were in the dryer I found a good internet cafe. This was harder than it might sound. Queen St (the main drag in Auckland) is littered with internet cafes, but the first three I looked at were all running Windows 98. Since I wanted to mount my CompactFlash card for pictures and ssh (putty) login that wasn’t good enough (W98 needs special driver, W2K doesn’t). Of course, the best one was right next door to the hostel but was hidden and didn’t have a sign out in front of the door. I only found it by looking in windows and being nosy. I uploaded my first batch of pictures right then and there.

Once the clothes were clean and dry and folded and put away, I walked back down to Viaduct Basin to watch Victory and LeDefi go at it. I walked back on Hobson, which runs parallel to Queen since I wanted to familiarize myself with Auckland. I went out for a beer and dinner (my first local fish and chips, of course) with Peter from Scotland who was sharing my room. After dinner we went to the TV/social room and watched this strange reality show. It was a race between pairs of backpackers who had to do a treasure hunt throughout southeast asia.

Saturday saw me again down in Viaduct Basin, this time watching Team Dennis Connor overcome GBR Challenge. I took a long walk home, detouring west past Victoria Park, where I watched my first live cricket game. It was totally amateur, but fun and incomprehensible nevertheless. I found a supermarket and bought some groceries. Shock of shocks, preparing one’s own food can save a lot of money. My daily food budget is NZ$20, which is possible, but not very filling or high quality or convenient. It is quite easy to come in under budget if I make myself breakfast and dinner.

There was an anti-GE (genetic engineering of food) march in Auckland on Saturday. At the end of the day I went again to the TV/social room and picked a (verbal) fight with a kid who just graduated in molecular biology from U of Guelph in Canada. He was in blind support of genetic engineering and I tried to make him see that there might be a downside and that at least the people who are doing the research should take responsibility for their creations. Not great sport, but it killed an hour before going to bed.

Since the reason I came to NZ in the first place was to watch the America’s Cup, I spent the next two days trying to find the best vantage point. On Sunday I took a local bus up to a small town (pop 4900) called Orewa, which is 30 km north of Auckland. I checked out one of the two hostels in town (it was very nice) and made a reservation. Orewa has a supermarket and a lot of nice small shops (green grocer, butcher, bakery, etc) and would make a very solid base to work from. It is also about a 1 hour bike ride or half hour bus ride from the Whangaparaoa peninsula, which marks the northern boundary of the America’s Cup race course. I’ll be in Orewa for the LV Cup quarter finals repechage, so I’ll get a good idea of how well I can observe from the north.

Yesterday (Sunday) I took the ferry from Auckland to Rangitoto Island, which along with Motutapu marks the southern border of the race course. I hiked up 260m (845ft) to the summit which is a volcanic cone. It took me about 45 minutes and since the air was nice and cool I didn’t overheat at all. After a quick lunch of dried apricot and two granola bars up top, I got my first live view of racing. However, Rangitoto Summit was too far away, even with 10x25 binoculars, to observe easily. I fear Whangaparaoa will have the same issue. This means that I will likely need to buy a more powerful pair of binocs and also a monopod to steady them. On the way back down I took a lot of pictures. Highlights include the basalt lava fields (Rangitoto is a relatively new island, only 400-500 years old) and a couple of shots of Oracle towing in after some practicing on the Hauraki Gulf). At the summit there were some GBR supporters who were listening to the race over the radio, so on my walk back to the hostel I picked up a cheap transistor radio - now I need to figure out which station the races are broadcast on.

Anyway, I’m off for four nights on Waiheke starting today, Nov 19. After that I’ve got a week scheduled in Orewa. Things become less clear after that, but I want to go to Wellington and Christchurch next.

Cheers!