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June 21 Auckland and the good old USAAlong the way, we've tried to sample a few sporting events that aren't popular in the U.S. (I will never go to a cricket match though). We went to a Real Madrid soccer match in Barcelona and wanted to see an Aussie Rules Football game in Sydney, but were never around for a game. We got lucky in Auckland to catch a rugby union contest between New Zealand and Ireland. The New Zealand team is called the "All Blacks" - there's no racial connotation there - they simply wear all black uniforms (the New Zealand national soccer team is known as the "All Whites"). People here are crazy about the All Blacks and I was surprised we were able to buy tickets the day of the game.
I was also surprised at how much we both enjoyed watching the match. Obviously, some of the strategy nuances and rules are a bit fuzzy for us, but with the help of a guy seated behind us, we figured out the basic concept and followed along. New Zealand, along with Australia and South Africa, are the powerhouses of rugby union and didn't have much trouble dispatching the Irish. One of the most entertaining parts of the game was the All Blacks performance of the "Haka" or Maori war dance (I mentioned this dance in the last blog) - they do this at the beginning of every game as an means of intimidation. Imagine standing across from 25 massive guys, stomping and arm slapping, dressed in all black, with tongues out and eyes bulging with craziness. Intimidating is a mild description of this pre-game tradition.
After 16 days of making out our bed every night and storing it away in the morning, walking to the shower, and not being able to stretch our arms out without hitting the walls, neither of us was saddened to turn in our campervan the morning after the rugby match. It was a good way to get around and save money though, I just don't know how people travel around in those things for long periods of time. Before we turned in the campervan, we made one last trip - north of Auckland to the Matakana wine region. We found a few smaller vineyards with nice owners, but we both had hit our max on wineries so kept our tour there short.
Our first full day in Auckland was Monday, June 19th. I didn't mention earlier that we had barely escaped a major snow storm on the South Island (the areas just south of where we were at Mt. Hutt got about 1 1/2 feet of snow, power outages, etc.), but that nasty weather front followed us to Auckland and we were rained on all day Monday. Thankfully, our day was focused on museums. We started at the Auckland Art Gallery and also visitied the National Maritime Museum which had a great display of New Zealand's history of settlement by boat and current supremacy in yachting.
Tuesday was a beautiful day and we took advantage of the weather to go up for a view of the city in the Auckland Sky Tower. The Sky Tower dominates the Auckland skyline and is the tallest tower in the Southern Hemisphere. Auckland, like so many cities, is not loaded with sights, but is a city to be experienced. Compared to Christchurch, Auckland doesn't offer much in terms of character, but we enjoyed wandering the streets shopping and people watching. One random thing we noticed here is that the city has a huge Asian population. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought we were in Tokyo or Singapore. It was also strange to think that Auckland holds about 1/3 of New Zealand total population - Auckland's population is about 1.4 million. I just found it interesting that what is considered an international city is basically the size of Nashville.
This blog has had over 75,000 hits in the past 14 months (even though I attribute about half of those to our parents) and we've had so much fun posting stories and pictures. I hope you have all enjoyed following along with us. We created an email address if any of you wish to contact us - it's jeffandrachelabroad@hotmail.com. For our friends and families, keep using our old email addresses, this is just one we created for the blog itself.
We will post one more blog when we get home - a ranking of our Top 25 Sights/Experiences in the world. Jeff TrackbacksWeblogs that reference this entry
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