First! FIRST!!

Auckland, New Zealand

Come on, how often do you get to call first on New Years? Well, if you’re a Kiwi probably about once a year but still, we’re American so it’s cool!

Sydney claims first and the world gives it to them but that’s hogwash. Auckland is closer to the dateline, so they have lawful first claim.

Also, Sydney has fireworks off a bridge over water (weak) while Auckland launches explosives off the Sky Tower which is right over their main city buildings…way more dangerous…which means way more cool!

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It’s the smell!

Auckland, New Zealand

Auckland just smells good.

Being people who grew up in cities, we got used to the smells that are a normal part of urban life: car exhaust, cleaning chemicals, in San Francisco the smell of cable car brakes is fairly common. Millions upon millions of people living closely together are going to generate smells. Most of them are not overly pleasant.

Auckland hasn’t yet hit that people to landmass ratio and there is an abundance of vegetation throughout the city. So as we walked around it was not unusual to stop suddenly, look at each other while sniffing the air and say, “wow, that smells amazing!”

Like we said, it was early spring when we arrived and while it was way too cold for Tiffany to think anything it its right mind would grow, apparently no one had told the Kiwi plants that.

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Eating Kiwi Style

Auckland, New Zealand

With a population of about 1.3 million, the city of Auckland is the major city of New Zealand. It’s considered so truly massive that recent legislation has consolidated all the suburbs under one city government which is referred to as the “super-city.”

To give you some perspective on this Auckland is the largest city, by far, that we have encountered in the South Pacific. It makes the major French Polynesian city of Papeete look tiny (to be fair, that would be because it is by our standards). Even for Kiwis, Auckland is huge. As many people live in the city as live on the entire bottom, larger, island of the nation. The Auckland area contains a full quarter of the national population of New Zealand, a nation that by islander standards completely dwarfs everyone else out here. Heck, the number of people in this city alone dwarfs many of the countries we’ve visited. Remember how Niue has a national population of 1300? There are more Niueans in Auckland than in their entire home country! So by islander standards, this place is huge.

On the other hand, in the US Auckland would come in as the 9th largest city in terms of population, somewhere between San Diego and Dallas.

… and we’re fairly certain that if we picked up the city of Auckland and just placed it into the San Francisco Bay area no would notice anything unusual. One because the city is not all that big compared to the rest of the Bay and two the city and its people would just fit in that well. Continue reading “Eating Kiwi Style”

A Kiwi Christmas

Auckland, New Zealand

You’ll be happy (or envious, probably both 😉 to know that by the time December rolled around down here we managed to get full swing into summer.

And while it’s not exactly Florida temperatures, the added sunshine mixed with a stubborn defiance of the weather that the Kiwis must have inherited from their British ancestors makes for another warm-weather festive season.

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Kia Ora!

Auckland, New Zealand

Kia Ora means hello in Maori, the language of the indigenous people of New Zealand.

A plane flight brought us from Tonga to Auckland where we planned to spend a week or two with friends before returning to the US for a little while.

Right up front we want to make something clear about New Zealand. It’s not like we’ve ever claimed to be completely objective in reporting to you our findings during our wanderings of the world. Though we do our best to see things from different angles and explore the cultures that produce different ways of thought from our own we also understand that we are outsiders looking in and we may not grasp everything we see in all its minutia. We are human after all. Overall though we do our best to at least give you multiple points of view. This was very difficult for us to accomplish in New Zealand for one key reason:

New Zealand is about the most awesome country we’ve ever visited in our entire lives.

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Hail Brittania!

Enroute Auckland, New Zealand

Before entering New Zealand we really should take a moment to recognize something we have grown to realize in our travels.

Play this while reading:

When people ask us what we think of USA & UK relations, we, without fail say the same thing:

“Britain and the US have exactly the same relationship as Greg and his sister. Allow us to elaborate: During times of peace, no one fights more with each other than the US and the UK…but the second someone else steps into the fight to attack either side, both siblings immediately turn and jump the new threat, providing each other their full and unequivocal support. Once the interloper is decimated and we’re both sure the other is alright, the two immediately turn back on each other.”

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The Upside to Colonization

Tongatapu, Tonga

Downside to never being taken over by a western power: There’s a lot of poverty in Tonga.

 Hut village on the edge of the capital town

 

There’s a lot of wealth too, it’s just focused on the royal family and a very small percentage of ultra-rich.  Driving around Tonga, like in Mexico, it was not unusual to drive past a grand palatial estate that had hovels as immediate neighbors.

 

 

Due to religious dedication and cultural tradition, churches and graveyards were typically the nicest areas in the towns

 

So you’re saying “Ok so yeah guys hey you notice we’re kinda having the same thing here back home?  What, you been under a rock the past few months?”

On a boat, actually, rocks don’t float.  And this is different though the overarching issue is the same.  What is the guaranteed minimum quality of life we as Americans, or as people, should have?  Isn’t that one of the core issues that universal health care, minimum wages, taxation, all of it ultimately comes to?  Tiffany’s brother Chris and Greg spent a few hours talking about “the right of internet access.”  It all comes down to what is the minimum acceptable standard of living that we can reasonably expect.  Where that line should be drawn.

In Tonga, there is no minimum we’re aware of.

 

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The many hazards of landlubbing

Tongatapu, Tonga

We ended up at this luau & Tongan food fest put on by a local entrepreneur in an Oceanside cave.  Just getting there reminded Greg of one of hazards of land bound life outside America…

Seriously, either there’s something in the North American water supply or all those growth hormones we keep feeding our cows and plants are rubbing off because back home Greg is able to pass though most passageways without being actively molested by the ceiling.  A feat he has a much more difficult time with everywhere else in the world.

Remember how in Vava’u we noticed that the men’s dances had a lot more movement than the women’s?  Yeah that’s because the men’s dances in Tonga were actually used for the teaching and practice of armed and unarmed combat.

 

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Pirates!

Tongatapu, Tonga

The capital island is all-in-all not as cool as Vava’u.  But hey, it ain’t bad and they got the awesome fried rice we mentioned in our last post, not to mention the royal estate.

 

And goats!  Goats they’ve got.

 

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China and the Mormons are buying the South Pacific

Tongatapu, Tonga

Did we mention that the ferry that we’re on replaced the one that sank with 27 people onboard a few months back?  The ship was unsafe and everyone died.

We found this out at about 1 am while chatting with the bridge team.

Our voyage was thankfully uneventful and we arrived the next day on the capital island of Tongatapu.

We spent a week there and first off: Best Chinese fried rice ever!  No idea why, makes little sense, but dude, you’re talking to two people who lived in the Bay Area for years so it’s not like we’ve not had good Chinese.  If you ever get to Tonga, go to the Chinese restaurant next to the hotel in the capital facing the water on the main shore road.

Speaking of friend rice, Tonga is also a perfect example of something we’ve been meaning to bring to your attention for quite some time now:  The Mormon church and the Chinese government are buying the South Pacific one village at a time.

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