Auckland, New Zealand (March 15-17)

Aukland

Well, the frenzied tour of New Zealand has begun. We woke up yesterday, went to the airport, had a good flight (3 hour flight for us now is a piece of cake). We met this awesome chick on the plane Karina. She is a music entertainment event coordinator for acts in NZ and Australia. We rented a car and drove her home. She most likely saved our lives, because driving on the wrong side of the street could have killed us. However, with her help, we arrived safe and sound, but not without me nearly hitting a bus.

New Zealand is not Australia. This is Madrid to Sydney’s Paris. This is the country cousin. It has some new construction, but not nearly the massive growth in Melbourne and Sydney. It has the “Sky Tower” (the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere) and a casino (requisite in all cities), but its lacking the money. The cars on the road are not the Mercedes and BMWs you see up North. These are tired, many over a decade old (ever here of the Mazda Familia? A dime a dozen here). However, things don’t seem to be old enough to be cultured or historic. They just seem to be sort of old. An early ‘60’s office building with black and green accents, a 1980’s hotel.

However, that does not mean New Zealand is awesome. These are the nicest, most international crowd we have met. Within an hour of landing, we were drinking with 10 new friends who worked at Ernst & Young Auckland for a going away party for one of them at a Belgian Beer House. We met Solei, an Argentinian beauty who served us our Chimay with deadly cute smile and we partied with her and her friends until 4 in the morning.

We then went to White House, the funniest strip club we had ever seen. You walk into the hall and see a Sculpture of Bill Clinton. All the girls are wearing American Flag bathing suits. Very funny. It’s different here, to say the least. Prostitution is legal, so you can see what you want and get it. I struck up a conversation with Louwan, who was texting her boyfriend, who was with his girlfriend now. She was “the other woman”. I told her “that’s all right, he’ll leave her eventually”. Actually, I didn’t, but I could have.

I left there, went to an internet café to log in and then went home.

Aukland was a blast. The rest of Friday was spent walking around, going to the Viaduct (a bad, small copy of the docklands of Melbourne and Sydney’s Circular Quay). The main mixed use building was horrendous and badly designed.

We took a ferry to Devonport, across the bay, in Aukland and walked to the top of the volcanic hill there. The walk was almost straight up and, though short, was thrilling. Along the way, we met up with 5 people from an English school, 3 from Brazil, one from Saudi Arabia (a journalist who is traveling for 8 YEARS!) and a guy from Mexico. The arab guy could have been a con artist, not sure. It seemed quite strange that the Saudi government was paying 2/3rds of his expenses to travel and write things about countries he was not going to (for example, his last article was on Iran). However, they were very fun to hang out with and we grabbed a beer with them afterward.

I then went back, slept a bit and then we went out to Ponsonby area of Aukland, a more upscale, more New York Lower East side, cool and professional area. Like its NYC counterpart, it was next to the “Fringe” area, filled with black-leather punker people with nose-rings. We ate at a very cool taco place where a guy from San Diego served us tacos that were “from South of South of the Border”. The advertisement showed a picture of a fence and said “smuggled in daily”. You get the picture. We wound up at a bar named Sponge, with lots of good looking people and a dancing area in the back. Unlike the other DJs we heard, this guy was awesome.

Aukland is just not the same as what we are all used to. The country lives and breaths travel. The people you meet, not just at tourist places, but everywhere are from Everywhere, with a heavy concentration of people from other Southern Hemishpere countries. But, as you walk down the street, internet café’s abound, with “Visa’s purchased here” signs every other store. This is at the very end of the universe really. We are about as close to the International date line as you can get without having your right side a day older than your left. The shrubbery looks Hawaiin one place, and Miami another. Everybody here basically is either too old to dream, getting ready to travel or arriving from some place with more than a 15 hour flight time. It’s exciting and rewarding to just walk down the street.

In the bar I meet Ellen, a 23 year old French Hottie. We danced for a few hours together and hang out. However, after not properly screening the prospect, I was informed at 2 in the morning that she had a boyfriend back in France. Um, well….enough said. I thanked her for the dance, for wasting my opportunity to get some in Aukland, and went off to fish in other ponds (since the once flush pond of Sponge had all but emptied out). I wound up, 45 minutes later, at White House again (it’s the patriot in me), talking with Louwan, who was working the bar again.

The story of Louwan
Cute, 5’2”, petite, dressed in the standard American flag bikini, Louwan is disarming. Born to a non-existent father, and a mother living on “the system”, her small town life in New Zealand was not destined for bigger and better things. At 15, her mom kicked her out of the house, and I am pretty sure it was not totally undeserved. She left school and started hanging out with an Aboriginal boyfriend. She was dead broke, so spent most of her time shoplifting. She was arrested a few times. One day two years later she found out she was pregnant, at which time her boyfriend kicked her out of his house. She was homeless. She had recently been arrested and was spending her days doing community service. When she showed up for work, it was the people she was doing work for that provided temporary housing for her. She got an abortion, moved home (I think wither her grandmother) and began again. At 18, she moved to Aukland to get away and find a better life. She began working in a retail store and rose to manager. At 19, she restarted relations with her mother and her mother told her to quit her job and start working as a stripper so that she could earn more money and give her some since she was dirt poor. She did just that, and within a few weeks was taking money home at the rate of $80/year for working 3-4 days a week. Not bad. She liked the dancing, but didn’t like the lap dances. After 6 months, she quit because of bad blood between her and 5 other woman dances who accused her of trying to steal their boyfriends. She also wanted to see if she could find other work. She couldn’t. No high school, no college, mildly criminal past probably makes it difficult. 6 months later (a few months ago) she returned to the good life of the White House. Now she has a boyfriend, but, even that is not straight forward, since she is the “other woman” to his real girlfriend. She suffers from depression and takes medication, but has currently run out of the medication. On Friday, she got a piercing in her lower abdomen, an inch below her current piercing in her belly button. It look cool, painful and she said that it still was hurting abit. Talking with her was very cool, and I left her suggestions for some movies and to read some of the inspiring books I have read in the last few months – “Journey of Awakening” by Ram Das and “Happiness”. Hopefully, they provide her some inspiration as well.

I got home at 6, after talking with Eyal a bit late at night about some potential deals that were cooking. We woke up this morning, and drove 6 hours to Pauanui.