Last day in Auckland - 27.9

I have been on the road for 28 days and far as I can remember this is the first morning yet when I did not have to set a wake up alarm! It felt so darn good to just sleep and not have to wake up to the beeping watch. But on the other hand I could not sleep in peace either as I'm sharing my room with at least 3 other people. Well there are 8 beds here, but I have no clue how many of them are occupied :) I could recognize at least 2 other people in the room and one bed being occupied over the night.

This dormitory style living has become such a natural thing already that nothing surprises me anymore. People entering the room at 3am and turning all the lights on, somebody waking you up in the middle of the night to ask if I've seen a black rain-jacket, people you have never met before starting to talk to you without any introduction just like they are your best childhood friends and so on and so on. At least nobody touches anybody else's things as far as travel bag or clothes left on the bed go - that is a real no-no. Privacy as far as bags/things and food goes is pretty safe around here. There are probably around, oh, I don't know, hundreds (?) of rooms being occupied with backpackers each keeping their little box or bag of food in common kitchen and nothing is ever touched that is not theirs. Pretty amazing, but I guess you do to others what you want to be done to you - everybody basically understands that they want their things to be left untouched and it would be nice if their food would be in the same place the next day as well.

Although I'm getting a bit tired of the dormitory life already - I'm waiting forward to my 3 nights in a hotel in San Jose. Later will probably camp over at my friends place. Staying in hotel has at least one negative aspect as well - total lack of social life and meeting people. I guess if I would be traveling for a long periods of time then the ratio would be about 1 to 10, meaning that for every 10 nights in hostels I could use 1 night in a hotel. In reality, that is pretty much what I have been doing here as well.

Allright but today I had real cultural day. Managed to get myself going by 11:30 and right after breakfast I managed to find myself in front of Auckland Art Gallery. Main exhibition showed works by Rita Angus. Friendly guy at reception explained me that she is a very famous NZ artist, but quite unknown outside the country. Spent probably around an hour there and got a quite good understanding of this lady's life. It was good to see all the paintings of places I've already been to :)

Plan for the day was to make my way over to Auckland Museum. Oh-uh, getting there was quite a hassle - I could not figure out how to get across those criss-crossing motorways that ran right next to each other. Looking at the map I had two options and both of those meant considerable walking. Picked one of them and ended up going up and down the stairs and getting stuck in little quads that did not have an exit on the other side. Finally found the correct bridge to cross, with a help of one local, and made my way towards Auckland Domain. From there it was just a short walk over the hill to the museum.

I had gotten a hint from UK-Canadian couple about getting the sonic music tour while I'm there. Well, this was the best thing ever! You get a little device where you get to choose tracks when you enter the room and of course there are headphones involved. Those headphones were wonderful, all the other noise was left out, all you had was music. So I was not able to hear all the screaming kids and loudly speaking Asian tourists (why oh why do they have to speak so loud all the time!). That was wonderful, thank you for the hint! Museum itself was very nice as well. It had 3 levels and I spent probably about an hour on each one of them. Last level was a bit depressing with covering WWI and WWII, but I guess you can't get over not around it in any proper museum.

History looks so different from this part of the world though. I'm used to much different way of presenting WW than what I saw today. Whole Europe just seems so tiny and in a way pointless when looking at it though the eyes of NZ (which is small itself as well of course). I guess it is just so remote and small compared to all the other big and much more influential countries around here (starting with Australia and continuing with Japan and rest of Asia). Once again it got my thoughts moving in totally different direction yet again. Traveling does wonders.

So I highly suggest Auckland Museum when visiting City of Sails :) By the time I had made my way back to City Tower around 6pm I was dead tired and spent the rest of the evening behind my computer and watching bit of TV. This is my last night in Auckland. I do have half a day tomorrow as well, but I'll probably spend it sleeping in in the morning (well sleeping till 9 is pretty good already, checkout time is 10 around here), packing once again and then just chilling and figuring out a way to get to the airport in time. My plane leaves at 15:05 tomorrow towards California, first to LA and then to San Jose. I'll arrive in destination tomorrow morning at 7am :) Bizarre huh :D Moving back in time - wohooo!!!!

Auckland: Waiheke Island - 22.9

Arrived in Auckland late last night. Got the hostel booked already in Christchurch times ago, but forgot to ask for the exact address. Luckily I got the travel guide - or so I thought :) Well I do have the travel guide and I managed to navigate to the address where the hostel is supposed to be, well surprise surprise, it is not there anymore. Helpful people guided me to the correct location - it had moved a year ago :) Anyhoo, got all checked in and to bed by 11:30 so all good!

I hadn't done really any research on what is there to do in Auckland. But I did know I wanted to head out of town for Rotorua and Waitomo - so got all that set up with help of locals. About an hour of sorting and booking and checking and set it was. Now I had a day to look around in Auckland. Figured that it should be easy - pick up couple of booklets, grab a map and head to town. Wrong :). All the booklets tell you are the museums and islands. Oh well, so I picked one of the islands. At least the ferry ride should be nice.

Ferry took about 40 minutes to get to Waiheke island. It was a beautiful little place. Great views, nicely marked hikes and beautiful beaches. Did about 3h walk covering Ocean View Road, Oneroa Bay, Beach Parade, seaside walk up to Newton Road, walk through the streets to the opposite shore, The Esplanade and way back through Oneroa to Matiatia Bay. It was great. Apparently the millionaires are quarreling over the best pieces of land here - I can see why, the place has wonderful views and nature.

Once back from the island walked around in town. There is not much to do in Auckland it seems to me, other than visiting the museums as it looks like. As I have another half a day there before I fly to California I did quite a bit of asking around of what is there in Auckland. 75% of people said that they could not find much to do either :) So my conclusion is that this really is a dump as described by people in south island ;) One of them actually gave me a question in this format: "why you going to Auckland? It is a dump. And there is nothing to do in north island - you should spend the time here instead!" :D :D :D Funny people! As I see then Australians really don't like New Zealanders, then again south island people in NZ don't really like north islanders. Now the question is who the north islanders despise :)