Back to Auckland - 26.9

Today's goal is to get back to Auckland. I have bus tickets for tomorrow, but as I got my share of caving done already yesterday then I'd like to get back to Auckland now please :) The plan is to talk to the bus driver to let me on board with tomorrow's ticket (it is not possible to change the ticket).

North island time planning was a bit poor on my part :( If I would have planned it a bit better I would have made it to Raglan for 2 days as well. One of my current roommates was telling wonderful stories of this wonderful little town. I'm sad that I never got to see this great place. One more reason to come back here :D

In the morning I had about 3 hours to kill. Besides the regular every morning routine of packing my bag once again (I'm a real bro in that by now, do they hold any competitions in it anywhere :) ? ), I managed to have a wonderful banana-pancake and hot chocolate breakfast :) Bit of time in the wonders of world wide web and then to the visitor center to familiarize myself with caves in the local caves museum. Besides caves, it covered a whole lot about glowworms - I feel like a glowworm specialist now :)

Time for catching the bus got closer :) As I mentioned yesterday, I had an arrangement with a couple from UK-Canada who would give me a ride to Auckland at 2pm if I get stranded here. Then I would have another 2 hours to kill though, but that is better in any case than to spend another night here. Finally the bus arrived and bus driver did not even hesitate on taking me on board :) To Auckland I go :)

I was complaining previously that there is nothing to do in Auckland. Well, I gotta take my words back. Since the city is just spread out over a huuuuge area, it takes a while to get to the fun places around here. Now I'm finding all kinds of things to do, but most of them are not doable in 2h time :( or even not doable with less than 12h notice :((( For an example here one can go Canyoning! Found out about it through a couple from US. Also I was a bit suspicious about going to a museum here, couple from UK really praised it and suggested to take the music tour. So will try to get to that tomorrow.

Got to town at 5pm, again the check-in and then headed to town. With my few hours I managed to walk all the way up to Albert park and take a look at Auckland University campus. Next followed a random road to the port and went looking for -5C bar.

-5C bar is something Ave suggested me to go and check out :) Found that around the corner, right next to Lenin bar :) Lady at the counter gave me a discount (the prices increase at 6pm and I got there just 5 min past), entry includes one free drink and whole wardrobe to keep you warm in there. Wardrobe would be jacket, pants, boots and gloves. I just went for gloves and jacket. Come on, it is just -5 ;) Drink was served in a glass made entirely out of ice, the whole bar counter was made of ice as were the walls. Bar itself was quite tiny, I imagined it to be a bit bigger than that. There were couple of "couches" covered with animal skins and whole lot of ice sculptures. It was quite nice. I happened to be there with a group of NZ ladies who had come to town for the weekend to see a musical. They were all about to fall over when they heard that I'm traveling alone and coming from such far away country. Just like everybody else I meet, they were no exception in saying the famous sentence "you are the first person I meet from Estonia" :) So that is what it feels like to be a celebrity :D juust kidding!

My evening ended with coffee place that offers the best hot chocolate ever! They also offer 1h free internet usage with any purchase. I got 2h :) , because the guy who took my order forgot my blueberry scone in the microwave for 25 minutes, finally when I went to ask for it he was apologizing for 2 minutes in a row.

I've been anting to go to movies for the longest time already so decided to use my Xday (whatever they day is at any given time) evening for a movie. Movies selection is surprisingly poor for such a big city :( Managed to find one though - Quentin Tarantino's new movie "Inglorious Basterds". Very Tarantino as was expected, people die here and there throughout the movie - even main characters just die without warning, typical Tarantino. Great camera work and good setup of the story. Mr. Pitt is getting old though :) And his character was a bit too typical for him - would have liked to see something more original than that. But oh well, all in all it was good one.