Devonport-astic

So, I've been a bit behind on this. I've actually been typing out almost everything I've done in a word document because I want to write it all out as a story-a sort of annualism non-fiction thing, the idea of "I lived in NZ for a year, here's my story" dealio. But, for the time being, I think it will simply behoove us to just jump right to today. If you want to know what I've done in the past few days (job hunting, talent scout interview, met a few new cool people, hung out with England, hung out with Tara, decided to re-learn french-bought a novel in french and a dictionary-wrote a bit, went to a stand-up comedy show, moved out of Kat's into a kind of crappy--but gloriously cheap!--hostel, failing at my budgeting because food is so expensive and well, I have to eat, embarking on couch surfing, skycity interviewing, loads of veggie sushi eating) you'll just have to wait for the book. ;)

I woke up today at around 9 but stayed in bed till around noon. I was just sleepy and lazy for some reason. I wrote a little bit, which was good. Steve text me and wanted to know if I wanted to go to Devonport (not to be confused with Davenport, Iowa) and I figured, why not, I'm not doing anything else. I agreed, but at this point was still in my pjs and cuddled up in my kind of smelly room (this hostel smells a bit.) After talking to both Karly and Ben online, I hauled myself out of bed and hit the shower. This shower had a curtain (unlike the last place I was staying which led to a bit of mess and subsequent tension) but it also did not have a shower head. It was, in fact, a hole in the wall. I couldn't believe that the water would actually come out of there, but when I turned the faucet, out it spewed. It was certainly functional, but still, the shock was a little hard to ignore. I showered and padded back to my little room. There was a guy in the hallway whitewalling the walls, or at least I think that's what it was. He could have just been painting them white, but he was doing it with a sharp pancake looking flipper, not a paintbrush. Regardless. [It has brought to my attention that this is in fact called 'plastering.' Mais, bien sur! Silly me.]

I got ready, locked my backpack (can't be too careful) and headed out to meet Steve for our Devonport adventure. I didn't know if the rest of England would be coming along --[For those of just tuning in, I have three British guy friends, Steve 1, Steve 2, and Nick and I refer to the trio of them as "England." I spend most of my time here with either Steve 1, Tara (who is from all sorts of places--born in Ireland, half Maori, half Irish, (right Tara?) lived on a boat, lived in the Middle East and Dublin, now back here for school), all of England, or Ana from Germany] --but when I got to the corner where we were meeting, only two thirds of England were present--we were missing a Steve, who had had a rough night (they like their alcohol) and wanted to stay in bed.

By the time we got down to the Ferry pier, Nick had changed his mind and headed back to the hostel, leaving just me and Steve 1. We spend loads of time palling around, so this wasn't a problem in the slightest. The Ferry was only 10 dollars (which is like 7 US dollars I LOVE this exchange rate, seriously) and we only had to wait a bit before one showed up. Steve got some soup that turned out to be absymal and I got a chai that was wonderful. NZ really knows how to make chai, I'm telling you. The Ferry ride was nice, but fairly (or ferrily?) uneventful.

We arrived in Devonport and I liked it instantly. I should probably explain what "Devonport" is. Devonport is a borough of Auckland. It's not an island, but it's quicker to get there by ferry than car. So far, it's my favorite part of Auckland. When I laned in Devonport, I felt like I was in a foreign country for one of the first times since I've been in New Zealand. Although Auckland is a fine city, it is not much more than a city. If people didn't have accents and there weren't sushi places littering the streets, I would think I was in Chicago.

But Devonport looked like a seaside town. The houses were very nice, but quaint, small, some of them worn but in a loved fashion, not simply destroyed. Think older picket fences, swings from trees in the front yards of little houses with gardens, palm trees, and all sorts of other exotic looking shrubbery. The cool thing is that Devonport is in (or well, built around) a giant hill that is in fact a dormant volcano. Naturally, Steve and I decided to climb to the top... but not until after we took a...



horse drawn carriage ride! It was only 5 dollars per person, and Steve spotted me the 5 since I only had my debit on me. Steve's much richer than me :) Merci, Steve. There were three Clydesdale (sp?) horses, and I felt sort of bad for them, all chained up, but at the same time, the ride was nice. Slow--we simply circled about two blocks--but cool. To be honest I could barely understand a word that came out of the driver, and the only others in the wagon were two women from Australia. When I told the driver (or I guess driver isn't the right word? it's not a car...) I was from "near Chicago" (I absolutely HAVE to tell people that here or they'll have no clue where I live-- "I live in Illinois" often means nothing to them) he told me he could see that--because I looked like Al Capone. I joked back, flipping my hair and saying I get that a lot. Funny stuff. Another cool thing was that this driver let a bunch of kids with skateboards hang on to the back of the carriage/wagon as we walked around the main street. I thought that was pretty awesome.

After this, we embarked on our hike, which took a lot less time than we expected. We found some cool things a long the way--half way up there was a building called "The Bunker" and when we went to investigate, we discovered that "The Bunker" is the name of a folk music club meeting place. We were both thrown by this--we had not expected there to be a folk music building half way up a dormant Volcano. I love this place.
We kept going and going until we got to the top, and there other people up there. The top was pretty cool--there were little painted mushrooms (I'm sure they served an actual purpose but had been painted decoratively--you'll see when I get the pics up) as well as an old historical "gun" that had been built to fend off the Russians way back in the day (I don't actually think the Russians ever made it out to NZ, but if they had, the Kiwis were prepared). It looked more like a giant cannon, and it was built to stay hidden in the ground, so we could go down through a little "fort" and see the rest of it. We could also climb allll over it and we took loads of pictures. Steve took one of me balanced on top of the cannon itself doing a yoga pose, because I'm cheeky like that.

This volcano was beautiful--it really just looks like a hill, but very green and living. Karly said it best in her blog--the air in New Zealand just smells green and healthy and alive. There's no hole or anything at the top--and it is VERY steep to go down. Especially since Steve and I decided to abandon the path and just walk down the side of the Mountain/Volcano--which, in case you were wondering, is quite steep, and was rather foolhardy of us. But we survived the descension in one piece. We resumed the path after that. ;)

I should also mention that the view of Auckland and Devonport from the top of the Volcano was incredible. I almost cried. I looked out and thought yes, yes, I'm in New Zealand. Here is the beauty you don't see everyday when you pass shop after shop on Queen Street. It was a beautiful reminder of why I was here and where I was... and it was awesome to share that with such a cool friend--Steve's fab, we had such a great day.

We then wandered around from there--up at the top of the mountain I had seen this beach looking thing--it just looked like really dark sand, but Steve thought it was a marsh, so we decided to check it out. It took us a bit to get there since when we weren't on the mountain, we couldn't see it as easily, but we got there eventually, and as it turns out, it was most definitely a marsh. Not terribly exciting, but the stuff around it was. Loads of very smooth "football" and rugby fields, and this one we went to had three swings--but where there should be a seat for the swings was an iron pole on each one! They were the weirdest swings ever. There is a chance that they weren't swings... but they REALLY looked like 'em. You'll see when I post pictures (I have to wait for Steve to put them up first, my memory card is wonky on mine.) We passed some beautiful beautiful houses--especially one in particular. It took us a bit to walk back to town, but we simply wandered around talking about the women in our lives (heh) among other things. We made it back to the hub of town by pretty much luck--and by that time the sun was up and it was beautiful. This was around 5 o'clock, and the whole day (not to mention the last two days) have been rainy and grey grey grey. But tonight, walking around beautiful seaside residential but humming Devonport, the sun came out in full glory.

Hallelujah.