Auckland gets bizarre

On my way back to my hostel last night, to drop my bag off before heading out for some free d&b action, I noticed that Auckland had taken a strange turn once the sun had set: it had turned from a pleasant if somewhat sleepy town to one teeming with yelling, fighting, hammered idiot teenagers. They were on every street, screaming at each other and getting ango with strangers. It was wierd.

I headed out to the free dnb and at just after midnight there were 12 people there. I stayed about 20 mins then snuck out.

Today I met up with Thomas, who had seen that I was flying into Auckland on Jan 5th and decided that was so cool that he'd do the same*. Tom is about to begin a madcap and somewhat underplanned trip through the length of New Zealand on a bike. As he didn't yet have maps, cooking gear, or in fact a bike, we shopped a little before heading out to the pier to catch a ferry to Devonport, which turns out to the one of the most boring towns in the world.

The flyer had such praises as "one of the world's most beautiful villages" and promised that on our tour we'd be taken to 2 inactive volcanoes; when Ray the octogenarian picked us and the rest of the grey brigade up his minivan I started to have my doubts.

No so much a tour as a moving Neighbourhood Watch meeting, Ray's van took us through the sleepy town, pointing out all the features of the houses, marveling at the windows and even pulling over at a couple of estate agent boards so we could wow ourselves with photos of the insides. He tutted at a house that had been neglected and so 'ruined the neighbourhood', told us of his previous night's fish supper ("We didn't batter it, no.") and even pointed out a man buying a loaf of bread. It was like a horrible harbinger of old age.

On the bright side, the trip did provide much unintentional hilarity and we found an underground, disused milarity thingy with a creepy atmosphere and wierd writing on the ceilings, but highlight of the day for Tom was clearly enjoying a pint (an actual pint! None of this 'schooner' or 'midi' shit!) of local ale in the pub. I bought yet another pair of Sennheiser CX300s and we had a mad curry with some fantastic indian treats after so we were both happy enough.

Perhaps its become obvious that Auckland holds not all that much to do, if you have already bungee jumped and don't feel like drinking. We realised that we'd spent most of the day wandering the length of Queen Street and K road and not much else - but what else was there? I was starting to understand why my friend Claire hated it so.

One redeeming feature was the 2 free drinks and free pizza (one EACH!) we got from the backpackers bar, but us being old and, you know, not dickheads, we had to leave at about 9 when the tackiness got too much.

Its always a sad time saying goodbye to the wonderful Tom, but I sit safe in the knowledge that I'll be seeing him at Glasto, no matter what his cynical mouth says, and that our fairly ludicrous travel paths will no doubt cross again before too long.

Tomorrow, to Wellington - and not a moment too soon!

* This may or may not be true.