Francesca and Henk-Jan's Backpacking Trip!

Kia ora (that's 'hello' in Maori)!

It's been a few days since we last left you a few words about our state of being. You'll be glad to hear we've made it to New Zealand safe and sound. We left New York on the 25th of June with a 6 hour flight to Los Angeles. We had a short stop-over at LAX, and then continued onwards to Auckland, New Zealand. I am happy to say that this was the first time ever I slept comfortably on a plane. Francesca also managed to get some hours in, and we were both fairly rested in the morning. We were supposed to land in Auckland Saturdaymorning around 6:30AM. However, we ended up with another stop-over on Fiji, because it was too foggy in Auckland. After standing still at Nadi airport for an hour we were cleared for take-off and finally completed our last leg.

Arriving in Auckland we knew our trip had really begun. We grabbed our backpacks and jumped on the Airbus that took us to the citycenter. We had looked at some hostels and decided to go to Fort Street to check out Base and Nomads. The Base-hostel had apparently been sold off since my last visit to New Zealand in 2005, so we booked ourselves a doubleroom at Nomads. Tired, but happy to have started our trip we took our bags up and rested for the remainder of the Saturday. We did sign up for the free citytour with Stray on Monday.

Sunday was another day of rest. We checked out Queen Street, which is the shoppingstreet of the center of the city. Francesca had had a craving for McDonald's for a while now, so we went and grabbed her a meal. Since I came to New York back in April she had not touched KFC's, McD's or BK's, so it didn't actually taste that bad. The weather outside was still kind of bad, so we just stayed in for the majority of the day watching Lord of the Rings, which Francesca had never seen! Omgosh, I know! Who hasn't seen those?

Today is Monday the 29th of June and earlier this morning we jumped on the Stray-bus for our free (yay!) tour of the city. We saw the first thrillseekers' sites: a slingshot for 3 people and a controlled bungee off the Skytower, the tallest structure of the Southern Hemisphere with its 328 metres (1,076 ft). I have already done 3 bungees, and Francesca is not too keen on them, so we passed on the opportunity to do a jump ourselves.





Our busdriver, a Maori, told us about the creationstories of Aotearoa, the name Maori give their country. Here's the story in short:

Maui was a demi-god, who lived in Hawaiiki. He possessed magic powers that not all of his family knew about.
One day when he was very young, he hid in the bottom of his brothers' boat in order to go out fishing with them. Once out at sea, Maui was discovered by his brothers, but they were not able to take him back to shore as Maui made use of his magic powers, making the shoreline seem much further away than it was in reality.
So the brothers continued rowing, and once they were far out into the ocean Maui dropped his magic fishhook over the side of the waka. After a while he felt a strong tug on the line. This seemed to be too strong a tug to be any ordinary fish, so Maui called to his brothers for assistance.
After much straining and pulling, up suddenly surfaced Te Ika a Maui (the fish of Maui), known today as the North Island of New Zealand. Maui told his brothers that the Gods might be angry about this, and he asked his brothers to wait while he went to make peace with the Gods.
However, once Maui had gone his brothers began to argue among themselves about the possession of this new land. They took out their weapons and started pounding away at the catch. The blows on the land created the many mountains and valleys of the North Island today.
The South Island is known as Te Waka a Maui (the waka of Maui). Stewart Island, which lies at the very bottom of New Zealand, is known as Te Punga a Maui (Maui's anchor), as it was the anchor holding Maui's waka as he pulled in the giant fish.

Hope that wasn't too much of a wall-of-text; it's really an interesting myth to hear! After storytime the driver took us to the top of a pa, a Maori-fortification used in their fights with the Brits. We also cruised the waterfront and climbed a volcano. This was followed by a tasty, and well-deserved Seafood Basket at a nearby pub.









The final part of the tour took us to the Harbour Bridge, where we could see another bungee, and perhaps try one ourselves. We were hoisted in a harness and walked up to the middle of the bridge, to see someone run off the Harbour Bridge with a bungee-cord strapped to their waist.



This was the end of the tour and we knew what we had to do. We went back to our hostel to book our tour with Stray. We ended up getting a very nice discount and will start coming Wednesday, when we'll go up to the Bay of Islands. If the weather allows it we'll go to Waihiki tomorrow for a short hike (3~4 hours) on the volcano there. Tonight we have free dinner awaiting us at the hostel and even later we'll head up the Skytower for a nighttime panoramic view of Auckland.

E haere rā!