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October 5, 2002 | |
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October 5th New Zealand Auckland Hello friends, Well I have passed my first week discovering Auckland the City of Sails. Much of the time has been spent walking up and down every street, road, and alley thoroughly inspecting the bottom of pint glasses for marks or chips after empty their contents into my stomach. I did manage to wake early and go climbing at a place called the Quarry. Like the name suggests its an old rock quarry used to make stone for the prison that was built to the side. The city has grown up around it and now the quarry and the prison sit in the middle of Auckland. Very exciting stuff to be climbing on new rock thousands of miles away with no beta, no assistance and no clue which ones are the climbs. I met some locals(Mandy and Mark). Mark has his own trick line of climbing clothes(T.O.T.A.) similar to Prana with a cool, nifty little symbol and all. Mandy is Australian but has been living in NZ for the past 5 years. They are nice people and they had all the gear I didnt bring trying to save weight. I was bound to get into trouble just free climbing everything. I did the stupidest climb ever 30 ft no rope but it was only a 5.7 ish ( I couldn't tell you for sure because I used a locals climbing guide which was obviously written by a child in crayon and they use the Australian system of 1-32. Technically its an open ended system but until they invent rocket booster shoes I suspect the end of the scale would be around 34?=5.15. There was a conversion chart filled with graphs, histograms, barometric pressure variances etc. but only Forest Gump could make sense of it. I won't bore everyone with climbing jargon,simply put it was fun, I met 2 fantastic people and worth a mention. I have been vigorously shopping for a car so I can see something in this great country other than the bottom of pint glasses, boat harbours, night clubs and completely paralytic English. I found a cool Toyota mini van for $2300 NZD which at current exchange is about $950 USD. Its not all tricked out with the latest and greatest hippie paraphernalia that Ive seen in other vans but Its not beat to shit either. Should do nicely for the next 6 months. Auckland is similar to San Diego in size, sprawl, and downtown(people accent aside) although I wouldn't classify it as cheap. Everything is similarly priced because everything cost twice as much. Using PPP(purchasing power parity) the NZD is undervalued by 3% meaning things are only 3% cheaper here as opposed to home. Sorry I must apologize for the economics nerd I just turned into. Other than the weather changing by the minute the city is pretty, clean and green . I am heading out to a cool artsy community on Waiheke Island to try some of the wine and pick up some Maori trinkets for everyone. I remembered to bring plenty of glass beads and should I be suave enough maybe I can purchase the island. It worked for the Dutch! Funny story: While hanging out at Mandy and Mark's place in Ponsonby(ie. Hillcrest,SD) we sat around chatting about movies and such. Mandy asked if I had see(phonetically sounded) Etumama Tambeen. I though it was some cool local art film about Polynesian life, Maori culture or the indigent, drugs and prostitution. I tole her I didnt think the movie had come out in the States yet. She told the English transaltion of the film title then the fun really began. And Your Mother Too". Kiwis trying to speak Spanish is better than Chinese speaking Russian. I hope everyone is healthy and happy and I'm not dead yet, Auckland is a nice place but I am very anxious to get moving and see something. Peace from 13,110 miles from home, The Tomás |
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