We woke up and drove back into town, stopping first at The Long Black Café for breakfast. It was expensive and shitty. My toast was burnt, my eggs were burnt, my bacon was in these weird little patties that were tough to cut but tasted ok. Alyssa’s pancakes, which I ended up finishing, were burnt and eggy and kind of tastes like suck. Amanda’s French toast was good but small. We all had shakes. Amanda’s was supposed to be vanilla but it tasted like marshmallows.
When we went to buy tickets for the glowworm cave tour, the lady at the desk asked if we were students. I said not here, and she said, "do you have student ID from any college in the world?" so I whipped out my MATC ONEcard and she asked where that was from. I said Wisconsin, and then she got excited and told me all about how she loved the Dells and Noah’s Ark. I get a little fuzzy inside every time somebody here recognizes Wisconsin as, you know, existing. Because some people have never heard of it. We got a damn good discount for being students, and since she loved Wisconsin so much she didn’t even bother Amanda and Alyssa to go find their ONEcards, which they’d left in the van, she just took them at their word.
Our tour guide was a funny guy named Matt. They wouldn’t let us take pictures or video in the glowworm caves, I don’t see why not though really. I can understand no flash photography, probably damaging to the glowworms, but why can’t I bring my camera? Probably just so they can sell their $25 DVD in the gift shop. Amanda bought one. I’ll probably splice footage from it into my vacation video. Today I learned that fireflies are found only in the northern hemisphere. Glowworms are found only in New Zealand and Australia.
That was about all we did today. Then we ended up in Auckland, a journey which included a lot of travel on roads that were like interstates. In Auckland, we at one point found ourselves on a road that was eight lanes wide. Pretty impressive for New Zealand. The four laners were novelty enough, in a country where probably 90% of bridges (and there are a shit ton of bridges) have only one lane. Seriously, each bridge is marked in a way that gives one side right of way all the time and the other side always has to yield. It’s kind of ridiculous.
Auckland looks like Milwaukee but feels like Madison. We parked in a ramp, just to use a payphone, and the rates were astronomical. It was $7 for the first half hour, $14 for a whole hour and after that it just climbed until it reached something like $35 very quickly and tapered off. The way around that was getting your parking validated, which could only be done in certain places and only if you paid for stuff. We really only needed to use a payphone, but ended up eating some expensive ice cream and having a round of drinks just to get that parking validated. That brought our total for an hour and a halfish to five dollars for parking, which is reasonable. I guess it makes sense, that ramp is probably only supposed to be used by people who are patrons of the building above it. Still, when we stuck the ticket in the machine to pay, it said the total would have been $19 if it weren’t validated.
We ended up at the Ascot Star Motel, our main reason for choosing this one, which is relatively out of the way, being that the ad said free Wi-Fi internet. After getting the room for two nights and moving all our junk in (everything, literally everything from the van, since we need to repack for the flight home), I tried to log into their network. It told me I needed a password which I needed from the reception desk. I went to inquire and they told me I had to pay. Apparently, the free internet is only available in the lobby and it’s not Wi-Fi. I think that means false advertising, but since the guy at the desk was old and looked confused and gave me a deal on the internet, I didn’t complain too much. It was supposed to be five dollars an hour, but he gave me the whole night for five dollars. I let it go.
Tomorrow, we adventure in Auckland! This is what I have waited the whole trip to see. I’m excited.
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