First, some news on the money front: at the rate I’ve been spending, I can comfortably afford to stay through the end of March, as planned. I’ve been keeping very close track of my finances. This is how they break down for the first month:
Food $457 Transport $577 Phone $275 Mail $45 Internet $57 Laundry $26 Medical $143 Activities $63 Bed ($100)
All figures are in Kiwi dollars, so divide by two to get US dollars. Transportation includes the bus, ferry and plane fare for my trip to Christchurch, as well as local bus service in and around Auckland. While I’m glad I did the Christchurch trip the way I did, the cost can easily be brought down dramatically by booking a flight well in advance. That would reduce the cost from $340 to about $150. Also, the Phone costs include the purchase of a new pre-pay mobile phone which I will be able to sell at the end of my trip and recoup about $100. Finally, the medical costs represent three doctor’s visits and antibiotics, all for treatment of an ingrown toenail. I include them to show the low cost of healthcare in NZ. I saved $100 by staying with the Fords in Wellington and the Tuffleys in Christchurch.
My optimum spending was $600, with $1000 being the goal, and $1400 the hard limit. This comes to $1543. Deducting the one-time medical costs puts me right at my hard limit. When I then pull out the phone costs and the lesson-learned travel costs, I feel that the rest of the trip should be fine.
Now on to the news. I watched the LV Cup semifinals from my vantage point, though there was one day where the weather was so bad (misty) that I could not see a single boat. I’ve been working on adapting my kitchen skills, a baked bsicuits as per Sarah’s recipe twice. There was one evening where I had decided to experiment a bit. I wanted to make two dishes: brocolli on mashed potatoes, and carrots and yams in butter with cinnamon. I had never made mashed potatoes or the carrots and yams dish before. I had two pots going on the stove, one boiling water and the other simmering the carrots. All of a sudden, Steven, the hostel owner, storms in to the kitchen. He says it is urgent and he must talk to me. He grabs my two pots off the stove. I run after him thinking that maybe some important clients were coming to stay and needed the kitchen or something. He makes me follow him upstairs over the office to his family’s apartment. Now I’m thinking he’ll let me finish making my dinner there. No. He sits me down at his dining room table and tells me that he’s going to feed me an authentic Korean dinner (he’s is from Korea). Oh yeah, and that he’ll finish cooking my dinner for me while I eat. I ended up staying there with him for about three hours, eating and talking.
There was one day during the semifinals when there was too much wind for racing. Instead, I walked through Alice Eaves Reserve. This is an interesting place because it has some of the last remaing Kauri trees. The Kauris are the NZ equivalent of the west coast’s sequoias and redwoods. The European settlers cut them down left and right and since they are slow growing there are very few left.
Sundays are good days at this hostel. Steven has a deal with a Dutch tour company where they bring a busload of people to stay at the hostel every week. Steven cooks them a big barbecue and they stay at the hostel. The nice thing about it is that somehow Steven always ends up cooking too much food. The extras go to us poor hostelers. The free dinner is always welcome to the bean-counters here at Hal Goes Abroad.
For the last day of the semifinals I was finally able to talk another hosteler into watching with me. James is from the UK on a long holiday. He drove us both out to Manly where we picked up a lunch of fish-n-chips. Then he drove us out to my vantage point. Of course, the wind was uncooperative, being too light. We sat and talked for about 4 hours before there was barely enough breeze for a complete joke of a race between Prada and OneWorld. It was an academic exercise, since Prada was down 3-1 and needed to win two races to force a sudden-death tiebreaker the next day. Since there was only enough wind for one race, the result was irrelevant, with Prada being eliminated either way. Prada did win the race, but conditions were so light and shifty that it wasn’t interesting to watch.
Next came the roadtrip with Patti. I had met her on Waiheke a few weeks before and she was the first person I had met here who understood the racing the same way I did. Since there was a two day break between the semifinals and the semifinal repechage, we decided to hit the road and see some of the country. She had rented a car so we agreed to share those expenses. On Wednesday the 18th, we started off driving south of Auckland and then heading east towards Tauranga and Mt Manganui. Tauranga is interesting because the Around Alone race will be stopping there in late January and restarting on Feb 9. I’d dearly love to be there for the restart, and I’ve volunteered to help Brad Van Liew who is sailing on Tommy Hilfiger Freedom America. He sailed Balance Bar to a 3rd place finish in the last Around Alone, and I loved reading his emails and following his adventures.
The roadtrip ended inland in the town of Rotorua. Rotorua is known for its sulphurous aroma. It also has some adrenalin based activities, including zorbing. I tried the zorb at Medge’s suggestion. A zorb is a lot like a human-sized hamster ball. It consists of two nested plastic spheres. There are access holes in either side and the spheres are held together with hundreds of bungy cords. Air is pumped into the void between the spheres. The inner sphere has a harness. You get inside the zorb, strap yourself down, and then they push the zorb onto a ramp going down a hill. You roll and bounce flipping head-over-heels-over-head all the way down. I got seriously motion sick, but was able to hold on to my breakfast, if only barely. They are building a second track with two switchbacks which I suspect I’ll skip.
After the zorb, Patti wanted to visit a local winery which is making blueberry wines. We had a small taste. Their liqueur wasn’t bad, but they still have a ways to go. We also visited Blue Lake and Green Lake. Pretty, but nothing awe-inspiring. It might be that had the day been nicer (less clouds) they would have been more dramatic.
Patti wanted to head south, so she drove me back to the town cente and dropped me off. I walked through Kuirau Park, which has dozens of bubbling mud pits, steaming fumeroles and generally cool stuff. I also walked through Government Gardens and saw a war canoe (waka) and the rose garden. It seems like every big town in NZ has a rose garden, which suits me just fine. I tried to go into their main museum, but it was $10 which I decided was more than I could afford. Instead I went to watch the lawn bowling. I sat down and a man came over. I started asking him how the game was played, and he explained and we talked for a bit. His name was Doug. After his match was completed, he invited me into the club for a beer! I met the guys and watched the award ceremony. It turns out Doug’s team was the 1st place team. He got a $5 bill and a gift certificate to the supermarket which sponsored the tournament.
That evening I took the bus back to Auckland and stayed at the Auckland City YHA. The next morning I decided that I had to admit defeat and buy a pack towel. This was the first “major” adjustment in my travel and living plans. I just couldn’t keep dragging around that huge beach towel. It took up too much space in the backpack and dried too slowly. I watched the opening repechage race between OneWorld and Oracle on TV in the stadium at the Viaduct Basin. After the race I took the local bus up to Orewa. The next day on my way back from watching Oracle overcome OneWorld by 3 seconds from the vantage point, I made my second adjustment by buying some tuperware in town. Now I can cook bigger meals and store them as leftovers for another day. That evening, at Steven’s invitation, I joined him and his two sons at the beach. It was my first swim out here and it felt great. After swimming we watched a local man reeling in his longline. He was fishing for snapper. He didn’t get any, but he did get a stingray. They tried to push it back out, but it was too tired and couldn’t swim and the tide kept washing it in. After it died, Steven and his son brought it back to the hostel. Prior to running the hostel, Steven had been a chef. He said he knew aspecial way to prepare the stingray, so I hope I get to taste it later.
Sunday, I went down to Auckland first thing. I had arranged by email to meet Melinda (the woman who was also in Picton lookiing at the Edwin Fox) at the Auckland Maritime Museum. We spent about an hour and a half there. I must say, I was not impressed with this museum. Their collection was fairly broad, but lacked any depth at all. Items were simply presented and labeled with a name, but there was no background or story given for them. Anyway, Melinda had to go meet some other friends and I wanted to watch the 3rd race of the repechage, so we said goodbye. I went over to the stadium and was just in time to watch Oracle win a decisive start over OneWorld. Figuring the race would be textbook from there on out, I went to get some lunch. On the way I heard some good music. There were six guys with banjos and guitars singing sea chanties! These fellows called themselves Maritime Crew and instead of watching the racing, I watched them for three hours and sang the choruses. During their breaks I pumped them for info about the Auckland folk music scene and discovered that the Auckland Folk Festival is in late January. I’d love to go to it, but Barry will be around then and I don’t know what he’d like to do yet. I bought two of their CDs and traded phone numbers with them.
Yesterday was a fairly normal day. I took the bus out to Manly and watched the last race of the repechage. Oracle won again, so now OneWorld has been eliminated. This leaves Oracle to sail against Alinghi in the LV Cup finals. I didn’t get on the bus to go back right away. Instead I walked to Pacific Plaza, the local mall. I had heard that there was a cinema there and I wanted to know if they would be open on the 25th, and if so what would be playing. No luck, they are closed. Since the repechage ended early, I’m kind of at loose ends and not entirely sure what to do before going to Sydney. My choices are (1) hop a bus up north and see more sights, (2) stay in Orewa and relax and cook/bake, or (3) go down to Auckland and check out the many museums and sights there. I’m leaning towards number 3 right now, but we’ll see.