New Zealand - Part 1

Vanka Stanka

I wake up on a white plastic chain in NATBAG. I’m still here.
Slowly I begin to realize. I’m leaving for six months. Alone.

For a couple of months now I’ve been repeating the same sentences over and over again to people around me. Yes, I quit my job, yeah, probably six months – but somehow I didn’t really understood what’s behind those words.

Cry Baby...
First flight to Seoul goes by smoothly – the flight is pretty much empty, so I catch three seats, and stretch my legs. 10 hours gone by like a breeze, which only predicts bad about the next flight from Seoul to Auckland NZ…
In my 2 hours wait in Seoul Airport for my next flight felt like being in a Hiro & Ando (TV show – Heroes) look-alike competition, as EVERYONE looks like either one of them.

(Not) much to my surprise, as I get to my seat on the flight to Auckland, I see I am sitting between a family with 2 babies on one side, and a Korean kid (Ando) playing his gameboy Full Volume. There should be a law against babies in airplanes. Really, it’s worse than smoking – these no good creatures next to me cried so hard it sounded like someone is butchering a pig… send them to the back of the plane with all the rest of the babies, seal it with a sound proof door, and let the fuckers rot.

In short, one baby, who after I gave his dad my “blue steel” look, was taken to the bathroom by his dad, and the second proved to be a typical man, as the only way to make him quiet and happy was to shove a tit in his mouth…

Welcome to NZ – you’re a menace to society…
When landing, I went to pick my muchilla from the conveyor belt. Those of you who don’t know, New Zealand is really stressed about people bringing animals, food or plants into their island, because it might change the equilibrium (thank you “google thesaurus”!), so as I am waiting for my bag, a police woman came up to me with a small dog (actually, it looked like a giant nose with a tail…) who started sniffing my backpack… the police woman stated looking in the bag, and after a few seconds removes a piece of dusted hairs (??) and says: “hmm… lavender…”.
Well, I can’t really say my lifetime experience taught me how to handle these kind of situations, so after swearing I don’t have any more hair containing condiments; she left me to my confusion.

After the lady and the wagging node left, I picked my muchilla (which arrived, and by that breaks a long line of luggage loosing streak), and went on to immigration control, to enter the country, and the police man notices I have no flight ticket out of NZ, because my flight home is from Sydney… After 10 mins of explanations, he calls a fat Maori police woman, who takes me two floors up, to the Immigration Office.
The woman there asks me if I can buy a ticket from NZ to Australia now, because they can’t let me in without a ticket out. I say that I would really rather not, so she agrees to release me only if I can show her I have enough money to buy the ticket later, by going into my account online, and showing her the balance. Now, without going into details, let me just say that my balance’s average is negative, so to save myself I acted resourcefully, and decided to show her my dad’s account, and sure enough – after three tries, I managed to break the code (really dad, user: gad, password: god, is kind of obvious, no?), so she let me go.

The last stop in this airport nightmare was the guy from bio-security control, who found some dirt between the teeth of my hiking shoes, so he had to bring a toothpick, and now my shoes’ smile looks great!

Let’s Go SHAHAR, Let’s Go?
After two hours delay in the airport, I ran outside to find out whether I missed Shahar Peer’s match, as it so happens she is playing now in Auckland, in a tennis tournament. Unfortunately, I missed the match by an hour, but later on found out she lost miserably to Demantieva, so it’s not too bad.

First few days in Auckland
I found a hostel downtown, and went to scope the city.
I came back at 18:00, still suffering from jetlag, so I slept all the night through.

The following day I went climbing some nice city mountains inside Auckland, with a great view of the city

and went back to drop again at 18:00… jet lag is a bitch!

The next day I took a ferry to a cool volcanic island, 20 mins from Auckland’s harbour, and took a day’s trip around the island.


After that I met some great guys in the hostel, and we went out drinking, only to find one open pub close to the hostel, which happened to be a Karaoke bar.
Well, let the video speak for itself.


When I left Israel I thought I was going to hitch hike my way around New Zealand, but after talking to some people and thinking about it more, I’m thinking about buying a car and travel with it.
The big advantage of hitch hiking is the people you meet, and the adventure you experience along the way, but the main drawback of it is that you can’t rally see what you want, as you are totally dependent on others… I’m still not sure what I am going to do, but that will be decided in the next few days. I’m really keen on leaving the city and starting the trip from the north, but I rather do things right, then just buy a bus ticket and go.

Traveling when you’re older is quite different. I’m more spoiled (mainly with food) and less trying to prove a point (by growing long hair, for example)…

My first few days here I was in real shock, not fully oriented and motivated, but today was the first day I felt good about what’s about to come, and that I know how I want my trip to look like.