Cricket...more than just an annoying insect

It's also a sport that would never gain traction in America...EVER.  If we as a society complain about the length of a baseball game, imagine sitting a sporting event that is potentially 3-5x longer than your standard baseball game. That my friends, is a day at a cricket match.  Now having said all of that, I quite enjoyed my time at Gabba Stadium in downtown Brisbane watching the Aussies thump India in a one dayer.  Random travel experiences always resonate more than the planned ones. I had arrived at the Brisbane train station following my Great Barrier Reef excursion and was to meet up for one last day with cousin Jeff. Sent him some texts alerting him I had arrived, and despite him sending responses back to me, my phone never received them. So at about 2:30 I asked someone at the info desk if there were any sporting events going on in town for the day and it so happened that cricket was being played. It started around 1pm, so my natural instinct was to ask about how much longer it would be going on, figuring maybe there were 2 or so more hours. I would then have to weigh whether it was worth the effort to make it down to the stadium with 30 pounds of gear on my back. But the answer came back, "Around 9:30pm or so." Made my decision easy. So I went out to where the free bus was supposed to take people to the game and boarded with a married couple my age, Sharon from Israel and Chris from Australia who met while in Peru. Upon getting on the bus, the bus driver told me that since I didn't have a ticket, i would have to pay for bus fare. However, I had burned through all my cash since I was leaving the country the following day. Just as I was about to leave the bus, in modest disappointment, Chris told the bus driver he would pay for me and covered my fare to the stadium. I bought my ticket at the stadium and ended up being able to sit with them despite not having a ticket for anywhere near their section.  Chris was very nice about explaining the game of cricket to me and it also happened to be the first cricket match his wife had ever seen as well. She was far more bored than I, although the intense heat may have had something to do with that. We even talked baseball and other American sports in trying to compare cricket to them. I won't bore all of you with the rules of cricket, but the fans are every bit as crazy as those who attend Ravens game. People dressed up in country colors, face painted, men in bikinis and wigs, signs taunting the other countries, beach balls and the wave. What an atmosphere.

Traveled onwards to Auckland. Just another city if you ask me. New Zealand in general was sculpted from volcanic eruptions so the terrain is quite lush and hilly. One moment you feel like you are driving through the scenery of Lost, the next you are driving through vast farmland as if in the midwest, and then you have 90 miles of beaches as if driving the pacific coast highway.  My friend Stacey (whom I met while on my European trip 4 yrs ago and who just moved to New Zealand to be with a boyfriend 3 days before my arrival) and I drove up to the Northland of the north island in order to visit Cape Reinga Lighthouse. At the point of land where the lighthouse sits, the Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea collide and you can see whitecaps where the opposite flowing currents meet. On the road up to the lighthouse we were stopped by a sheep herder who was herding sheep down to a farm to be shaved. We were stopped for a good 5-10min as more than 3000 sheep came barrelling down the road like an avalanche and engulfed the car. Never seen anything like that in my life. We also stopped at sand dunes that were mountainous. Not a spec of foliage to be seen. Pure sand up to the sky. Quite the views once finally getting to the top.  Anyway, that's what I have been up to.  Going to hike the Tongariro Crossing on Saturday, New Zealand's best 1 day hike and then to do some blackwater rafting and glow worm cave activities on Sunday. All the best to those of you reading along.