Caboose

I’m in Greymouth just now, catching up on website updates. Most of the internet places I’ve found recently have been both very expensive and very limited in terms of what you can do (so I can’t sort out pictures before uploading them).

Anyway, I spent a couple of nights in Auckland. Went to the Maritime Museum and the War Memorial Museum but didn’t really warm to the city. It seems like they’re so busy trying to be a modern city that they’ve demolished most things that would give it any kind of character. But I was recovering from a long and horrible flight, so maybe I was just in the wrong mood.

(The thin lines you can just see coming down from the Sky Tower is part of an “adventure” activity where you can jump off the tower and drop to the ground attached to a wire.)

The flight from Canada was extra horrible because I went out for dinner with Adrian and Amy on Friday night, then for a few beers. By the time we got back to the house and I got to bed it was about 2:30am, I had to get up around 4:30am for a taxi to the airport! I was so hungover on the Vancouver-LAX leg that I was seriously considering using the sick bag.

LAX has to be a top contender in the world’s dullest airports, the Tom Bradley International Terminal has only several copies of the same three (dull) shops, a few food outlets and a general feeling of shabbyness. After far too many hours there I boarded the Qantas flight to Auckland, over 12 hours of being squashed into a full 747.

This is costing me a fortune, so I’ll finish for now and try to catch up later when I can find cheaper internet access somewhere else.