Back in ten

Greetings from Aukland. I landed safely yesterday morning with out too much jet lag because of the time difference of almost 20 hours. It just felt like I'd had a rubbish night's sleep in a piddly little upright chair which is funny because I had.

Aukland is a very pleasant city on the coast which is reassuringly British. I mean in the sense that unlike San Diego or Santa Barbara it wasn't all built in a productive afternoon with buildings the same colour as the road. There are more angles due to the lack of a grid and grass everywhere. The afternoon yesterday was spent getting better aquainted with this grass in a inter-hostel football tournament. My team played ok when nothing was a stake (drew 2 lost 1) then got thumped in our semifinal 3-0. Strangely a suspect goal against and a disallowed one for us didn't cancel each other out.

This afternoon has been mostly scheming after coming to the realisation I want to see everything but can't. I had a free city tour this morning which took in a bizarre meeting with a Maori chief who had some things to say about tourism and whale bones. He is a priest and a certified warrior which involves 4 days of having ink marking hammered on to your back by albatross bone. I would have got a picture but I used my last exposure getting a photo taken of me standing on an artificial toadstall with a volcanoe in the background. Not a brilliant decision.

Tomorrow I am heading to the Bay of Island which is North of here. Sunday I will catch a bus to Raglan to see if it had the best surf as some say before taking in a comparison of the equally vaunted east coast. You can't go to a former colony without being empirical.