(Top - "Grin", March 2008)
(Below - Te Awamutu, south of Auckland, March 2008)
It’s the 1st today, and while we breakfast at The Fat Dog Café we work that it is now autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, which means it is spring in the Northern Hemisphere. Why is this important? Well, it means that as we left England at the end of Autumn, we have missed winter completely! What we haven’t missed here is the rain. Outside it looks like the rain-gods are upset about something, as the roads have turned into rivers and we float north towards Auckland.
On the way we take a detour to Te Awamutu, a small town which is the birthplace of the Finn Brothers Neil and Tim – singers and songwriters from Split Enz and Crowded House. They, of course, have long moved on, but we buy the $5 pamphlet that gives us a tour around the town. We see the houses they lived in (or rather the plots where the houses used to be), the schools they went to and various shops they both worked in as boys. The Finn Museum is in the Town Library, which is shut. We have a coffee, and, like Neil and Tim before us, leave town the quick way.
We had, like all the previous places, booked our Auckland hostel the night before, but unlike the other places this one was awful. The hall smelt like something had died recently, and when the very grubby owner appeared and told us that he had let our room out already but he had another one, we started to feel uncomfortable. When we walked through one room to get to the one he wanted us to have, we saw at least 20 mattresses on the floor, which actually had enough room for about 5, which had on them a number of (they might not have been, but hey) illegal immigrants. Our room was small, which is ok. We’ve had small rooms. Our room had no lock on it. Hmmmm. It took no more than a glance at each other before I said we weren’t taking the room and could we have the deposit back, please.
He dropped the price, and then expressed his opinion that we would struggle to find anywhere else at this time on a Saturday. We said we’d take our chances and headed for the door. Once in the car, Chelle said “What are we going to do?”, and we decided to drive until we saw a phonebox, or a hostel. The phonebox was at the end of the road. The first one we called had a double room, at a better rate then the grubby one, and when we got there we really liked it.
It’s in a district of Auckland called Ponsonby, which makes me smile. The place is called Ponsonby Backpackers, which makes me smile as well. The rain has stopped, and we do our usual walk around the area, spotting posters advertising gigs by The UK Subs and The Adicts, have gourmet veggie-burgers and end up in an Irish bar called The Dogs Bollix (no apostrophe – which Chelle told me not to mention when I got the drinks). There is a band setting up, called Druid, who look like secondary school teachers, and the poster says “From The Corrs to The Dubliners”. Chelle points out the fact that that is a fairly narrow bracket, but we we give them a chance. They murder “Dark Side of the Street” and we leave just as they start “Dirty Old Town”. A sensible escape, we both agree.
The main street in Ponsonby (grin) is now really busy, and the bars have spilled out people onto the street, making it hard to walk in any kind of a straight line. When we get back we realise the drawback to being in a cool, and therefore busy, part of town. There are three clubs opposite the hostel, and they are all competing to be the loudest. Chelle just falls asleep, I, of course, don’t.
The next morning, we walk the other way and head for the CBD, pausing only to queue up at the coolest café in Ponsonby (grin), called Dizengoff to get some fantastic scrambled eggs, and even better coffee. We call in at Victoria Market and watch a karaoke competition which Chelle could have won before finally getting to the centre of Auckland, Queen Street. Just as we walk inside the main shopping centre, the fire alarm goes off and there is an evacuation. We watch the Firemen arrive and, for some reason, I have to drag Chelle away to head for Victoria Port, where we spot the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior 2, and check for any French accents nearby.
Of course there is a free bus that loops around the city, and we jump on to take the long way back to Ponsonby (still grinning). We grab some noodles and trudge back to the hostel, sort out our washing, book some of places in California, ring home and speak to both our Mums (it’s Mother’s day in the UK), and get to bed.
Tomorrow we fly to LA.
In the morning we cook everything we had left in our food bag for breakfast, we check our mail and we have one from our friend Kayce, who has invited us to house-sit in Huntington Beach for them for a couple of days, and tells us to try and get tickets to see The Foo Fighters in LA. We have a look on Craigslist – the place to get anything in LA – and send a couple of emails about tickets for sale.
We pack and set off to have a look north of Auckland, having a walk along the coast before heading west to Piha Beach (via a long a tortuous route), where we stop, change and head for the beach. There is a sun shelter which we, well, shelter under, and have a splendid time chatting with both locals and tourists, before leaving in good time for our flight at 21.30 that evening.
Until we realise that the flight is at 19.30pm. This makes us panic, because we are a good distance from the airport, we have to go through the centre of Auckland, and it’s rush hour. I drive, and Chelle does her navigation thing, and somehow we get through downtown and find ourselves on the road to the airport fairly quickly. We’re old hands at dropping cars off now, and we get to the queue in the departure lounge with about 20 minutes to spare. As we wait to go through the security, the tannoy calls for a ‘Maggie Thatcher’, and it’s easy to spot fellow Brits in the queue.
I don’t sleep again, and make full use of the in-flight on-demand entertainment system. The plane seems to be full of old people, who spend the whole flight walking up and down the plane making it impossible to sleep anyway. We land in LA at 10.30am on the 3rd, 9 hours before we left Auckland thanks to flying back over the International Dateline. It’s slightly easier to go through it than explain it.
Immigration is a doddle this time, and soon we’re haggling with the man in the Alamo Car Hire place. We’ve booked a Pontiac, and he wants us to upgrade to a Toyota SUV. We’ve done this a few times now, so first we get Chelle on the insurance for nothing, then get a tank of gas included, and eventually he gives up and we pay exactly what we had wanted to in the first place. Except there aren’t any Pontiacs in the car park, so he gives in and we get the Toyota Highlander SUV anyway. You always think it’s going to be a good day when that kind of thing happens, and as we set off north on Sepulveda Boulevard, I manage to forget that I haven’t slept for two days and just enjoy the fact that we’re back in LA. And it’s good to be back.
We zig-zag through the city and head up to Melrose Avenue, back to our favourite hostel, The Orbit, where we park, check in, shower and head straight out again for cheap food at our favourite noodle bar at Farmer’s Market. Back in the hostel and we have a positive reply about tickets for the Foos, we have a beer on Fairfax and finally to bed. Neither of us has any trouble sleeping this time.
