Heading to tropics, one last time

Day 131

"Come hell or high water
My search will go on
Clayborn Voyage without an end"

It's my last day in Auckland for now. Today I'll be heading towards Pacific again, destination Cook Islands, where I'll be arriving yesterday. So in essence I'll be time traveling to the past :)

So what's my impression of New Zealand so far? Well, I'm hoping not to offend few of my friends who reside in New Zealand atm, but one word that springs to my mind when thinking about Auckland is fail. This city is just failure in many aspects. It's not very pretty, poorly designed, some horrible arcitechture that reminds me almost of DDR, parks have no design, traffic doesn't work, very difficult to find basic services, weather sucks, etc. Auckland's harbour is very similar to Sydney's allthough smaller and not nearly as pretty.

People in New Zealand are nice though. I went to Air New Zealand office the other day to work out my travel plan on Cook Islands and there was this great guy called Michael assisting me. He made tons of calls and suggestions when something didn't work out they way I wanted. I was impressed until I got SMS from him later in the evening asking me if he could show me around in Auckland :-/

Hmm...it's entirely possible his intentions were completely innocent, but my weak gaydar had blinked couple of times before so I decided to skip his offer :)

Some people I met in Tonga told me to get out of Auckland as soon as possible. Well, finally on saturday I was able to do it and went to Waiheke island which is 40 minute ferry ride from Auckland. I'm so glad I did cause there I was able to get my first glimpses of actual New Zealand. I'm sure Waiheke is just a small teaser of what New Zealand has to offer in terms of landscape and people, but it was enough to restore faith. I'm now certain that when I get back here at the end of November and start my NZ tour, it will be awesome.

Waiheke island is more or less wine island. They have about 20 wineries there in total and all sell wines grown specifically in the island. I bought an all-day bus pass for 8 dollars and circled around the island all day. Weather was superb there and wines were just stunningly good. I was actually amazed that they were heaps better than wines I tasted in Hunter Valley, Australia.

So now it's time to head out into tropics, one last time on this trip. It's more than likely that this is the last time I will cross over the Tropic of Capricorn before heading out to home...sometime in the 2009.