Auckland, AKA The Land of Auck

Believe it or not, the end of March is nigh.
This nigh-ness gives me all kinds of mixed feelings, which is to be expected.
After all, I've fallen in love with New Zealand.
And since neither of us want to do long distance, one of us will have to leave.
I have a strong feeling it's going to be me...but what do I know? I'm terrible at relationships. LOL?

So, I'm spending my last few days in Auckland, which is the largest city in New Zealand with a whopping 1.2 million people, or 1/4 of the entire population of the country.
Everyone forewarned me about how sucky Auckland was as a city, but I think everyone needs to lay off the haterade because so far, I have no problem with it.
Sure, it's not earth-shatteringly amazing, like New York, but let's be fair.
There's only one New York. And it's in New York.

As you may recall from my last post, I was on my way to hike the Tongariro Crossing from Taupo.
Bad news: I didn't make it.
Due to a mix of very cold, rainy weather with 70-80 km/hour winds and general idiocracy on the part of my tour bus operators, I spent the day and night in a pretty sweet hostel at the foothills of the mountains, so things weren't a complete wash.
In order to get back to Taupo in time to catch my bus to Auckland, I had to hitch a ride and woke up at 4:15am to do so.
But, the woman who drove me was awesome and brought both her dog and cat along for the ride so all the stress and frustration caused by the bus company was absolved.

Let the record show: [domesticated] animals fix [all of] my problems.

So now I'm in Auckland until the 22nd, when I fly to Sydney and say hi to Justin and Amanda for a day until I hop a plane to Israel.
So far, I've done a lot of walking around and have been reintroduced to many of my previously dormant leg muscles because Auckland is one hilly sonofabitch.

Last night was St. Paddy's Day and since I woke up so early that morning, I only had it in me to put on a green shirt and drink 2 green beers before I headed to bed by midnight.
But I did meet a Californian who asked me to dance to the only Garth Brooks song the bar would play, and when I said no because I wasn't so into this song/rodeos/Sarah Palin, he told me to wait a second, spoke to the DJ, and the next song that came on was something by Nickelback.
He looked at me as if this was an improvement; I told him I needed to use the facilities, so I left the bar, went to another and used their restroom.

Then I went to sleep while the rest of the city drank and swayed in a collective embrace of Irish cultural stereotypes.

On that note, I'm headed to bed again.
It's been a pretty busy month.