everything the light touches is our kingdom

5/1-5/2

It's not an adventure until you're in the back of a '92 Nissan Urvan barreling down the highway with a couple of Swedish guys blasting Swedish dub step headed to a mechanic's so they can fix their radiator so you can buy their fading blue '92.  Think left, look right.  It's a manual, so I'll have to teach Jamie to drive it.  But it's got a great sound system and all the right characteristics that put the funk in functional.  Welcome to my second day in New Zealand.  

We spent the first day wandering around Auckland.  It's a city.  A big one. 1/3 of NZ's entire population, including both islands, live here.  After seeing San Francisco in all her glory, I'm kind of underwhelemed by another big city.  It feels like an extension of SF.  There are ocean views and parks with lovely foreign green things growing.  That's great, but I'm ready for the un's: the unknown, the unexpected, the unfamiliar.  And the ex's: the extraordinary, the exciting, the perplexing, the inexplicable, the exceptional.  I get a taste when we walk up Mt. Eden, Auckland's highest volcanic cone.  We top out to a stunning 360 view of the entire isthmus and both harbors.  The deep symmetrical crater is called Te Ipu Kai a Mataaho (the Food Bowl of Mataaho, the god of things hidden in the ground).  It is highly sacred so you can only stand on the edge and look down.  The soil is so porous that water never gathers in the center.

Got another taste when we visited Auckland Domain, a 80 hectare park that offers winding paths below a canopy of leafy green wonders of every shape and size.  The Wintergarden is in the middle of the park, which has indoor greenhouses with non-native plants like bananas and orchids, and a lovely fountain area. 


Still, I lust for the adventure that calls from outside city limits.  The kind that fills your lungs and your heart beets a little faster at the realization of where you are.

So instead of being slaves to the bus system, or risking it with thumbs up on the side of the road, we settle on a camper van.  Basically a regular van, the ones where you see bobble head doll collections covering the dash board, with a built in bed in the back seat, curtains covering the windows, and random tubs and crates jury-rigged to every surface for storage.  Most come with cooking supplies, camp chairs, even fresh linens if you're lucky.  We spend day two locating a dependable yet affordable van with enough pizzaz to satisfy our inner eccentric.  We've selected the young Swede's Urvan, assuming they get the radiator valve (like I know what that is) fixed in the morning.  

They're posted up in North Shore, which, conveniently enough, is where we've relocated to for our first WWOOF experience at Kawai Purapura in Albany.  So we swindle a free ride to KP and spend the evening listening to Fleetwood Mac and exchanging stories with new friends and fellow WWOOFers in the KP kitchen.  I'd say success all around.