Hello Auckland!

Today, was the day, that I would go canyoning… and I had no idea what that meant. So I get up at my usual, ya know, 6:30 in the morning. I actually wake up even earlier than that, but I decide 6:30 is a more acceptable time to be moving around a room with 6 other girls sleeping. I mean, I really don’t mind waking up early as long as I’m not tired. But I clearly didn’t have that problem at this point. Breakfast is eaten at 7:30, so it was just a waiting game until we were to leave at 9.

That came quickly enough, and we got into the vans. Now Auckland is New Zealand’s most populated city, but it doesn’t take very long before you get all up in the woods. They said they had winding roads…they weren’t kidding. They tend to be really narrow too. Anyway, we get to the place and we are instructed to get helmets, a harness, jacket, and a wetsuit. Most people got a backpack to put their things in, which was convenient for them. I had to make a makeshift bag by stuffing my jacket and harness into my wet suit, and tying the legs around my waist and using the arm holes as a strap to put on my shoulder. We hiked for a little while and it wasn’t too bad. Then we stopped to put our wetsuits on. That was quite the experience. It took a lot of shimmying, stretching, and pulling to put on that sucker. Then we practiced our repelling techniques. Piece of cake, where is the waterfall? That’s what I would be repelling down. Except we still had to hike a little bit and since my wetsuit was a little big, it was hard to bend my knees. I felt so clumsy wearing that wetsuit. I fell a good amount of times, but I just thought it was funny, because it didn’t hurt at all. I guess wetsuits work as good shock absorbers. Who knew?

Anywho, we start jumping off of rocks and into canyons of water. You could say I got a gist of what we were doing when they told us to jump. So I did.

When we got to the river, they told us we would have different types of jumps. Ones where we could free style jump, ones to bend our knees for, and others where we had to slide down the rocks. And this took all day. I think I used to have a fear of opening my eyes underwater unless I had goggles, but I swear every time I jumped I would open my eyes before I came to the surface, and it wasn’t too bad. It also might have been because the water was cold so you get that gasp reflex when you go under. It was really fun though.

It took a long time for everyone to repel down the waterfalls, so we got separated into two groups. I was in the second. When we got down the last waterfall, we got to eat. I didn’t know what the sandwich was, but I grabbed it and started eating. I think that is just a reoccurring thing. I see food, and I eat it. The only depressing part about that was I thought we were leaving sooner than we were so I threw half of it in a trash bag. I was still hungry, so it was a sad time. But who has time for sadness when there were eels just chillin’ in the water behind me. They seemed really tame and everyone was just feeding them their bread.

After that we were at the bottom of the canyons, so we followed the river back to the trail. I just made that sound really simple right there, but I’m telling you, river rocks ain’t no joke. They are slippery.

I did make it back in one piece, and that night we went to Silo Park. It is right on the water and they play a movie every Friday night at 9. They have a little playground, food trucks, and a little market. Very cool. I was in the mood for pizza and I paid $12 for one. That’s $9 for you Americans reading this, but I don’t know what I was thinking. I was just blinded by the cheesy goodness, but I really should have looked for something cheaper. It was cut into 6 pieces that fit onto one of those white paper plates.

They were playing Rocky Horror Picture Show, because it was Friday the 13^th. When the movie started they had these people dressed up as the characters and they performed the music scenes happening on the big screen. So that aspect was interesting, and I guess so was the movie.

Okay, sleepy time.

(I forgot to mention that after we arrived in Auckland we were separated from the Otago people the whole time, so we got to know some of the other people better.)

Might as well talk about the rest of the time we spent before moving into our apartments.

The next morning we were going to Waiheke Island! This was only a 30 minute ferry ride as compared to the 3 hour one in Fiji.

The first thing we did was go to the Marae which is a traditional Maori meeting place. The Maori people are the indigenous population of New Zealand. We participated in the ceremony and set up our mattresses on the floor inside. After that, they separated us into four groups. Each would be doing a different activity, and then rotate. After we ate lunch, my first activity was sea kayaking. It was relaxing, yet tiring. We ended up losing one of our guys because he went through a cave and didn’t know where everyone else went, so instead of kayaking to the other side of the bay, we went back inwards to play some games. This required us to link up and climb across each other’s kayaks into another and stand up, but then we almost hit a boat, so the last people didn’t get to stand. We also played a game where we needed to pass a ball to our teammates before the other team blocked a pass, then one girl capsized and almost lost her go-pro. She thought it floated and was more concerned about her shorts getting wet. Luckily the water wasn’t too deep and she found it. As we got out of the water she managed to capsize her kayak again on shore and it was pretty hilarious.

Our next activity was just to take a stroll around the town. We walked past people giving out free “L&P” sodas. They are a classic New Zealand company. The soda tasted like if you mixed sprite and ginger-ale together. Pretty good stuff.

We took a look in a few art galleries and then we stopped by a piano shop. They had old, new, and everything in between. It was an elderly couple who owned the place and they started playing some of them for us. It was really awesome. I love live music and they told us that they were closing as we came in but they performed for us anyways. I was really happy we stopped in there. It’s one of those things that if time was altered even a little bit, we wouldn’t have gotten to have that experience. Then once again, we lost that same kid that we lost when we were kayaking. Everyone was just praying he knew how to get back to the Marae. He did.

That night they had us go around telling everyone a little bit about ourselves. I always dread those kinds of things, but it wasn’t bad. Then we had the option to go out to 1 of 2 bars, or stay in. I was really tired, and I’m not interested in that kind of thing anyways so I stayed back. A few other people were going to also, but they backed out when the overwhelming majority left. I ended up being the only one who stayed and they set up a movie for me, but I fell asleep 30 minutes in.

Today was time for everyone’s favorite activity. Winetasting.

I knew I wasn’t going to like wine, so I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it, but I thought I would give it a try. The way there was nice and we stopped at the beach, and I will regret to inform you, but wine doesn’t taste like grapes. I didn’t expect it to, but man, I had some hope. There was 5 to try, but I think the guy caught my drift, and understood that I didn’t like it, so he didn’t give me the last two.

Our second to last activity was to make a traditional maori toy. They are called poi’s, and it is a ball on a cord. We made it by taking a ball of cotton and braiding a cord to it. Then we took a plastic bag, twisted it tightly around the cotton, taped it, and then cut off the excess bag. Mine turned out okay, but I think I made the cord too long, and I messed up the braid too. I think a lot of people threw theirs out, but I still have mine. Maybe I’d throw it out if I made a better one.

Lastly, we would do the sculpture walk. It’s a walk around the coast of Waiheke with a bunch of sculptures made by artists. I feel like I don’t have enough appreciation for the kind of art that was there to fully enjoy what I was looking at, but some of them were really interesting.

After that, we returned to Auckland, and had our last dinner all together. We took over the whole place which is always amusing to see any regular people who must be wondering, “What the heck are all these kids are doing here”? But after that, I had a chilled night.

The next morning, everyone would go their separate ways.