After arriving in Auckland and writing the last update, I hired a bicycle and set off round the 50km cycle path which circles the main part of the city. The sun was shining and the harbour was lovely, so everything was going swimmingly at first. However when I got to the halfway point the heavens opened and all of a sudden things were going swimmingly in a rather too literal fashion. I got drenched from head to toe. Admittedly I wasn't wearing a waterproof...admittedly I haven't brought one on my trip...ahem.
So I took the bike back, got dried off, and spent the rest of Thursday and all of Friday exploring Auckland on foot.It's a nice enough city but to be quite honest it's nothing to write home about. So I hired myself a little white Toyota and spent Saturday driving up north to Paihia, in the Bay of Islands, which is where I am now. Today I drove all the way up to Cape Reinga, the very northernmost tip of NZ, with a look at the Ninety Mile Beach along the way. It's winter here at present, hence the sporadic heavy rainfall and winds, but on the whole the weather is still perfectly tolerable. And being able to drive on the left is a huge plus. But I've had to settle for automatic transmission, and my left foot is beginning to atrophy and waste away as a result.
Although I never really noticed any difference between American accents and Canadian accents, apart from the latter saying 'eh' after every sentence, I have very quickly learned how to distinguish Aussie from Kiwi. To produce an Aussie accent, you just have to impersonate someone from 'Neighbours'; for a Kiwi accent, you have to impersonate a South African impersonating someone from 'Neighbours'. Every vowel sound reverts to 'eeee'. Simple.
Once again I am grossly offended to find M*gpies intruding upon my personal domain. There's a lass in my dorm (she sleeps in the next dorm cos that's where her boyfriend is) and it turns out she's from Gosforth. 'Eeeeh, a Mack-am in me rooooom' she exclaimed disapprovingly. To add insult to injury, when everyone was debating what video we should all watch in the TV room, she was instrumental in building a consensus for 'Notting Hill'. Slut. I ignored the film and ate my tea, but even just the sound of Hugh Grant stuttering and smarming his way round Julia Roberts made my fear for my ability to keep from projectile vomiting over all four walls. So I hastily departed for the pub to watch the rugby instead.
Photo updates will follow as soon as I get to a suitable computer.
