Asia Update #32 - New Zealand

I spent a week on holiday in New Zealand. Figured I was already in Australia, so it would just be a short 3 hour flight (as compared to the 11 hours from Korea) to New Zealand from there…

The main goal of the week was to relax and drink lots of Guinness. Everything is cheap by American standards in New Zealand, and Guinness was no exception. A pint ran between $2.25 and $2.50 US, which is about half of what I pay in the States and a quarter of what they cost in Korea. And drink Guinness I did - I arrived on St. Patty's day, so worked my way down to an Irish Pub. 2 days later, I went to Palmerston North and hit another Irish Pub (this one had a pickup band playing Celtic music). Down to Wellington for a few days, and hit 2 different Irish Pubs (both with bands playing at them). Lots of Guinness drinking opportunities, which I availed myself to.

Between beers, I did also get some sightseeing in. This is a shot from the Auckland tower. At the viewing deck, they have these glass floors which you can walk on and look straight down from. Kind of freaky to stand there above so much open air.

This is from Mt. Eden, which is a volcanic crater in Auckland. Very cool. I even got to walk down to the bottom and poke around the volcanic rocks there. New Zealand is much like California - it has lots earthquake faults running straight through it. On the whole, though, New Zealand seems to have more volcanoes than California does.

Here is a shot of a kiwi bird and a kiwi egg. Funny looking critters. This one is actually a stuffed one, not a live one. I did see a live one at the zoo, but they are nocturnal and kind of shy, so I didn't get any good pictures of it. But the zoo seemed to know that this would happen, so left this one for us tourists to photograph.

This is a picture of Wellington, where I finished out the week. Neat town. And it seems to have lots of open space around, complete with trails. The ones I saw were all open to bikes. I stopped at a bike shop, and they said that there were lots of trails and most were open to bikes. Cool.