New Zealand

Somethings are best left to a little time and reflection before really putting in writing fully, and my second experience crossing the pacific is one such event.  I wrote about a quarter of what I wanted  to before the captain and I parted ways, the parting in itself something that will take a while to digest, and rereading what I had wrote made even that seem foreign.

So here I find myself in the middle of August, in the middle of winter, in New Zealand.  A beautiful land, full of nice people but with prices that make you wonder why they don't just charge you twenty a day to breath their rarefied atmosphere and than make everything a reasonable amount.  It is nice here though.  For the third time in my life I find myself emerging from an extended stay in the tropics into a temperate climate with cool air and welcoming hot water and it doesn't get old.  I spent my first day in Auckland walking around in shorts and flip flops, ecstatic to feel the chill in the air and a light, comforting mist.

As a city Auckland seemed only to be that - a city.  Rather undistinguished, it's architectural mainstay from what I understand is this spire like building which has much in common with it's Berlin cousin and both reflect their cities as much as the space needle does Seattle.  Overall it is quite unremarkable and while the people are as nice as advertised, there wasn't much character to the place.  One interesting characteristic of the city, and more or less of new zealand is the abundance of sushi places.  In Auckland they were as frequent as sandwich shops and burger joints in the U.S., mostly serving pre-made boxes but also a fair number of fresh joints.  I've been nursing an intestinal bug from French Poly have held off so far testing the waters of pre-made sushi.

There was just a commercial on for making spag bog with baked beans.  soften chopped onion, brown mince, add 'Watties' tomato sauce and then stir in 'Watties' baked beans "For that famous flavor." And that's pretty much all you need to know about New Zealand cuisine.  Also there's a lot of lamb.