six days in auckland. way toooooo long a stay

well. it was a bad luck saturday for me - almost five hours of struggling with pc's all over the place just to get a few pictures downloaded to the site and almost lost all of it. fortunately i was saved by a handy flash drive. to make myself feel better and get the flavour of what new zealand is best at,i went canyoning on sunday - over five hours of going down a mountain river, jumping into pools from 10m or so, abseiling the waterfall, sliding on my bum and chest....that was SOOOOOOOO cool! the instructor had the funniest kiwi accent ever and i shared a few laughs with two dutch girls. actually, i quite landed on my face doing one of the crazy jumps and got this horrible earache, and possibly a bit of a shock so all the way back on winding road i felt sick and i literary collapsed once i got to my room.
the thing is - every day brings surprises when you're travelling. and so monday turned out to be a spontaneous decisions day - i met nina, a girl from urugway who's dangerously keen on cycling, and after a bit of a talk i just thought - well, why not? soooooo....
we spent the whole day today browsing auckland for bike rentals and stuff and we finally got to that cool store, hedgehog, and after almost an hour of small talk we got ourselves two nice bikes with all gear. we're leaving tomorrow for brynderwyn to cycle around the north and then heading south. how cool is that , heh???? i am sooo excited. even though the back of my bike feels as if i was giving a lift to an elephant...
by the way, i downloaded some photos

auckland a gateway for a get-away?

been here for a few days...
getting from the airport was dead easy as this place is like an over-protective parent offering to do anything for you as long as you have money huhuh. at first i felt a bit lost after so much time on the plane, but just minutes after i settled in the hostel i went to explore the nearby volcano, mt eden, to admire some of its heavenly views. well,first thing i saw were...other volcanos! and of course, Skytower, doomed to be the highest building in southern hemisphere. wow. gotta go there at dawn one day.
anyway, so far i have managed to explore most of the heart of auckland, along with impressive Rangitoto Island, which was created by a...volcano eruption! god, this definitely IS a hot place. generally, every day brings news and information load i need to process. one thing for sure - got to leave this place asap.
today i moved downtown to this huge hostel, a real backpacker factory, a multi-storey nest in which i hope to find my way out of auckland.
i signed up for FHINZ which basically means i got a booklet of farm addresses around new zealand so that i can work there for accomodation. well, i've already found some cool places to go to...
it finally cleared up a bit so i'm gonna check out a few shops for hiking equipment. see ya soon.

hong kong transfer

well after over 11 hours on the plane i am more or less halfway to auckland. i'm on a mission here looking for a tripod for my camera, but the number of shops here makes it almost impossible to find anything! damn! well, again, the breathtaking view from the plane window made me speechless for a while (a rare experience of mine :-))...

gone so soon...

two days in London, packed, crammed, jammed with people everywhere around. i've managed to fly through a few bookstores though, in search of new zealand and australia guides. i must say 'wow' for the supply and the amount of literature on any god forsaken place in the world. i spent over two hours flicking through all those travel journals. maybe i should consider my career options since, as i noticed, there are absolute zillions of travel writers :-))) anyway, i found an excellent guide by trailblazer - great walks in new zealand (we used the trailblazer guide doing transpyrenees ) apart from four other books that i couldn't help putting in my shopping basket...well, all of them about the australasia region so i now feel excused :-))

contact details

all those wanting to stay in touch [brrrrrrgh]:
my gady gady number: 3283127
my skype profile: ewrakej
my msn profile: ewrakej
my email: ewrakej@gazeta.pl

my website IN POLISH : www.wordsaroundpol.blogspot.com

hope to hear from ya!

yes, i'm off!

finally, after over a month of waiting and constant hesitation i HAVE LEFT. however, my journey has been doomed from the very beginning. i woke up this morning and saw trees bent down almost to the ground. then, on the plane i could feel the tiniest stone on the runway as the plane ascended into the sky in the storm. the flight was delayed two hours and when i finally got to heathrow, it turned out that my backpack never got on the plane. with a nice bottle of zubrowka (special polish vodka, especially bought for my friend living in london) and presents for my moisturiser freak sis and her husband...i can see it with my mind's eye - a bunch of airport staff turning on the delicacies...arrrgghh! anyway, i hope to get my luggage tomorrow and in the meantime i can imagine using toothbrush sipping wine and planning my bookshop ride for tomorrow.
i spotted a poem on the tube , printed among other adverts. if i find it tomorrow, i'll post it here cause i reckon it couldn't be more accurate.
i think i already feel all this doing me good. travel makes you think. it makes you appreciate things you'd probably go past normally, it makes you alert as never, alert for all those signs of the world passing by. it also makes you jump into the current. i hope. this is what i want to experience.

this is what happens once you turn 25! 

the old boy. revenge?

'korean men are not attractive', my friend's words jingled in my ear as we were driving back home from the cinema. 'old boy' was the film. i've been thinking. what is revenge and where does it take us? i've been trying to remember any case of my personal 'getting even'. and what have i found? not much. is it just because i'm not vindictive? or is it because a payback requires bravery, malice...or any of the other shades that make us get it 'right'? do animals do it? is it human property exclusive?
anyways, who is to decide but us.