After a few hours on the bus, Sontsa & I arrived back in Christchurch. Since Christchurch is so big, we had to wait for another local city bus to take us to the actual airport. While waiting, we chilled out in Christchurch’s makeshift ‘bus station,’ which in reality was just a school bus with a couple of TV screens in it--interesting. After about 30 minutes, the airport bus came & we were at the airport shortly thereafter. We had some time to kill before we could check in, so we went upstairs to grab some food. Sontsa & I walked around separately to check out all of the restaurant options in the food court area. We had to laugh though when, after a few minutes, we both found ourselves standing in front of McDonalds haha. Why must it be so cheap?! So, we ate some food, did some people watching, slung our huge backpacks on again, then went back to JetStar airline’s check-in area. We used one of the little check-in kiosks to print out our boarding passes, which turned out to be quite the comical event when one of the boarding passes fell onto the floor. In normal circumstances, this would obviously not have been a problem. However, when you are donning ridiculously-sized backpacks that are practically bigger than you are, it creates a bit of an issue =).
Sontsa bent down to get the pass, and after barely making it to the floor, she then proceeded to get stuck in the squatting position, unable to stand back up with all of the extra weight on her back haha. After a short laughing fit on both our parts, she eventually made it back up to an upright position. I really can't say much though because I too had a similar experience when Sontsa & I left Napier for the first time; I got stuck bending down to get a water bottle I’d dropped on the floor of the hostel…and laughing just made it ten times worse =). Compliments to Sontsa though because it took me a hell of a lot longer to get back up from my squatting position than it did her haha. Ahhh man…good times, good times indeed. Anyway, back to the airport…the weight limit for checked luggage on domestic flights is 20kgs (about 44 lbs). If you have seen pictures of me carrying my backpack, it may not come as a surprise that I was quite concerned it would be overweight. When Sontsa & I booked our flight tickets at the travel agency in Dunedin weeks beforehand, we actually paid a little extra money to be allowed 25kgs (about 55 lbs) for our luggage…just in case. Still, we were quite curious to know how much weight we’ve actually been lugging around on our poor shoulders & hips for the last 4 months. Much to our surprise, Sontsa’s backpack only weighed in at about 18kgs & mine was 20.5kgs. Let me just say, it certainly felt heavier!
The flight to Auckland went well—very short. We arrived to town sometime after 9:30 pm, so the next step was finding the hostel that we’d pre-booked for the night. After a little bit of walking around & a bit of confusion, we found it…Choice Backpackers: what turned out to be the worst hostel I hope to ever experience. We were put into an 8-bed mixed dorm room, which consisted of 6 smelly guys and us. The stench upon entering that room was a nauseating combination of sweat, dirty clothes, and general uncleanliness. In addition, almost all of the toilets in the shared bathrooms down the hall were literally lined with either vomit or crap. Yeahhhh…REALLY lovely experience. We probably would have asked for our money back & just gone elsewhere if we hadn’t been so tired from traveling most of the day, and if we’d known of any other hostels nearby that were clean and cheap. As it was though, walking around aimlessly in the dark with our bags looking for one just didn’t seem that appealing either. It wasn’t until a week or so later that I gained the important knowledge of which hostels in Auckland are centrally located, cheap, and clean. So, we stayed at the disgusting Choice Backpackers for the night, wearing as much clothing as possible before going to sleep on the grimey beds that reeked of smoke.
The next morning, Sontsa had to get up really early to catch a bus to Tauranga to go visit her friend Max for a few days. He was one of the Chilean guys who Sontsa met in Napier when I was away traveling with Greg for those 2 weeks. The original plan was for me to sleep in while she got up, but as soon as her alarm went off at 5:30ish, I was more than ready to get out of there! I walked Sontsa to the bus station and saw her off. The next task was finding a new hostel! I went into one that I had noticed on the way to the bus station called Surf & Snow. It was spacious, clean, inexpensive and right in the middle of the central city—I’ll take it! After retrieving my bags from the other hostel, I got settled into my new 12-bed mixed dorm room at Surf and Snow. It would be my home for the next 4 days =) Immediately upon entering the room, I was greeted by Ross and Neve from Ireland, then met Hussein (can’t remember where he was from). It was my first time at a hostel by myself in almost 4 months. Even though it was strange to be without Sontsa, it was actually really good for me to experience meeting people on my own—good practice for Australia =)
In the course of my stay at Surf and Snow (SNS), I also met Francois and Oliver from France, Manuel from Mexico, Derrie-Ann from Whales, Nicholas from Ireland, Hisashi & Shinya from Japan, Justin from England, Sam (never found out where he was from), and many, many others. Although it doesn’t sound like it by my description of who I met, about 80% of the backpackers in SNS were actually Asian. So, I stood out quite a bit walking around there =) Very good times though. For the 4 days that Sontsa was away, I mostly spent my evenings catching up on my blog-writing (like I’m attempting to do now) & trying to get well by going to bed early. During the day, I spent almost ALL of my time stalking out free Wi-Fi around the city—for productive reasons, not just for Facebook, thank you :-P. I spent so much time in the public library, McDonalds and one of the mall areas that also has free wifi just researching, researching, researching. About 3 weeks prior to coming to Auckland, a woman at a temp agency here in Auckland, who I had been in contact with through a connection of mine, basically made it sound like she’d have a job lined up for me when I got to the city. At the time, I was completely naïve as to how temp agencies actually worked, so I made the stupid mistake of believing her. Therefore, I didn’t do any job searching before coming to Auckland since I thought there was no need to do so. It wasn’t until after my arrival that I realized the woman was a bit full of crap & I needed to find a job on my own..quick!
Hence, the wifi stalking began. I researched, researched, researched, and applied, applied, applied. Plus, I was also on the hunt for a flat (an apartment), as I knew I was going to be settling down in Auckland for a while. I sent off a lot of messages to people who were advertising rooms available in flats and houses around the central city. I quickly heard back from two of the people I’d contacted & scheduled to go see the flats. One of the flats was a 3-bedroom, to be shared with an Argentinian girl and a Kiwi girl. The other was a 6-bedroom, to be shared with a group of five British and Irish. When I talked to one of the British guys on the phone, I asked him how far of a walk the flat was from the main part of the city, called the Central Business District (CBD). He replied, “Oh yeah, just a 10-minute walk. It’s really close.” Since I had some time to kill before I had scheduled to see the flats, I decided to walk by both of them to see where they were. The flat with the girls was at an awesome location, less than 10 minutes walk from Queen Street, the main road in Auckland.
The other flat, on the other hand, was on Upper Queen Street—and trust me, it is called “upper” for a reason. My trek there consisted of 30 minutes of walking primarily uphill…not exactly how the British guy had described it. After that tiring, one-way walk in which I broke a sweat, I decided I would not enjoy making that walk every day, much less multiple times a day. Therefore, I cancelled my meeting with the people at that flat. Later in the day, I went back to the 3-bedroom flat to meet the girls and see the place. I met Daiana from Argentina and Emma, a local girl who is half Kiwi and half Fijian. They were both really nice & easy-going. The flat itself was good too, located on the 8th floor of this really tall building, small, cozy & clean. Plus, the view from the balcony was spectacular! I stayed visiting with the girls for about 20-30 minutes, then walked back to the hostel to ‘cook’ some dinner. Within a few minutes, I received a text from Daiana saying that they really liked me & would love for me to move in if I was still interested. I wanted nothing more than to say yes right away, but was a bit concerned about making such a commitment when I didn’t have a job lined up yet. However, after thinking about it that night and the next day, I decided to just take the plunge & go for it. I had already pre-booked the hostel for one more night, so I had one last night of hostel shenanigans before officially moving in to a flat…but that will be for another blog =)
Cheers,
Ash
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