Lord of the Kebabs (Auckland, New Zealand)

Culture Shocked

I just ate Wendy's!! I don't mean the "Wendy's" that they have in Australia where they only serve ice-cream deserts, I'm mean the Dave Thomas' Wendy's where you get cheap burgers and frosty's! Wow... that was a refreshing treat I haven't had in almost a year. Yep, its been almost a year.

Anyway, I arrived in Auckland about 7 hours ago and other than seeing Wendy's, lots of Maori people and lots of greenery, a few Lord of the Rings spin off businesses (Lord of the Kebabs), it seems a lot like Australia. Well, I shouldn't pre-judge. I'll get back to you on the whole New Zealand thing. The people seem nicer though, a guy was looking at our ID's and didn't know where Alberta was. I said "Canada" and he said, "Oh, the only I place I know of in Canada is Calgary." Cool.

We're only here for 14 days and we've booked ourselves for this bus tour that can take anywhere from 11 days to 365 days to complete, so I'd say we're pretty crammed for the next while.

Holy Shit!!! Sean Astin just walked in the internet cafe!!!!!!! Swear to God!!!!!!! I think he just ran out the back door though because there was a rowdy group of guys outside. I'm a huge Goonies fan (I still haven't had a chance to watch LOTR 3), he was gone like that, I wish I could've gotten his autograph or picture!

Bogged

Back to Aussie stuff. Fraser Island, as I was saying in my last blog was a great time. What it is, you go onto this island that's mostly made up of sand. Captain Cook called it "Great Sandy", he was right. We were with a great group of people, there was eleven of us and we all rode together in a 4WD Land Cruiser. So what happens is that you get a Land Cruiser and explore the island by yourselves and camp there for 2 nights.

In the 3 days that we were there we saw Lake Mackenzie where the water was so clear and the sand was so white! The sand was really fine and you could clean your jewelry and exfoliate yourself. There's this old ship that was stranded on the island in the 1960's and it just sits there corroding away, its the coolest thing. We climbed to the top of this place called "Indian Head" where we were able to see sharks and manterays swimming in the ocean and out in the distance we could see whales spraying out water from their blowholes.

Bogged is an aussie term for getting stuck. That's what happened to us a few times. Most of the time you drive right on the coast where the sand is hard, avoiding the saltwater of course. There were obviously times though when we had to get to different places on the island and had to go through thick piles of sand, its like driving in snow, you get stuck. By the end of our trip we had a system down pact, as soon as we got stuck we all knew to quickly get out of the car and push! There's no sense in trying to go back and forth, you just get stuck more! We probably were able to free ourselves in a matter of 45 seconds.

Like I said, its all about the group. I gotta mention them because if we would have been camping with a bunch of losers I wouldn't have had as much fun. There was a great mix of cultures and nationalities with us, a couple from England with Indian and French background. 2 Germans, 3 native English and one guy, Jackov (yep, its it sounds like Jack-off, poor guy, traditionally pronounced Yack-ov) who's born in Switzerland but has Italian and Serbian background. Jack can speak English, Swiss-German, German, Italian, Serbian, French and Spanish! He was the entertainment of our group and loved to talk and make jokes and had a great zest to him. Everyone kinda picked on him though just because he was kinda cocky in an innocent way. He finally had enough when we all ganged up on him for using 7 sugars in his one cup of tea... you had to be there kinda moment.

Jaded

So after our little safari, we went sailing on the Whitsunday Islands on a boat called "The Jade". Its not as glamorous as it sounds. Imagine a boat that's 50ft long and normally carries 35 people. Imagine a little carpeted cabin where hundreds of tourists have trampled over and spilled their alcohol on, imagine the smell of it. Imagine a small bed where 3 people have to sleep on together, friends or not. What a lovely boat indeed!

As I was saying earlier, the company counts. Again there was a mix of cultures, Brazilian, Mexican, Spanish, German, English and Scottish. However, this time around everyone didn't mesh and so the trip was a little dry.

Don't get me wrong, we had lots of fun, we went to a really pristine beach (Whitehaven Beach), went snorkelling a couple of times, had an intro diving course (I'm not a fan of it though, feels weird to be underwater like that) and lots of sun bathing. Oh yeah, we didn't sleep on the boat though, each night we were brought to an 4 star island resort and there were dorm rooms there where we could sleep in instead of the boat, we opted for this and man it was worth it. Thanks to Cheryl Reid for giving us the tip!!!

Great Wall of China vs Great Barrier Reef

You can see both of them from outerspace, the difference is that the reef is a living organism, our tour guide from a glass bottom boat tour told us this trivia the other day. We went to Cairns and snorkelled in the Great Barrier Reef. It was really cool. Unfortunatley, Jeremy got seasick and was throwing up in white paper bags on the outer deck of the boat, poor fella. He tried to get into the ocean, but his fright of swimming got to him and went back to the boat.

Anyway, Jenny and I both got underwater cameras and went on a photo frenzy under there. Its a pitty though, a lot of the coral is dying and its looks grey, not as colorful as we'd hoped for.

Wish, I could talk longer but I gotta wake up in 6 hours and start my tour of New Zeland. Talk to you all soon!