Goodbye Oz, Heading to the Land of Kiwi

Tuesday morning, Meg and I boarded a plane for the final leg of our "year of procrastination!" We are off to New Zealand ... some of you might not be familiar with it so here's a bit of history:

New Zealand is under British rule and is located just south east of Australia and is a tiny country surrounded by water. It is composed of a north and a south island both of which are very different. The people are called "Kiwi" after the native bird found only on the islands but rarely seen in the wild. Both islands combined have a population of roughly 4 million (that's about 1/5 the population of Texas!) Located on the island are indigenous people called Maori who migrated here from the Polynesian Islands about 1000 years ago. There is a close relationship between the Mauri's and the Kiwi's and thus many of the Maori words for towns, animals, and trees have been retained.
Meagan and I spent the first night eating in Wendy's... yes, pitiful but there were no other choices at this time of the night and the thought of Wendy's sounded brilliant! I must say, it was better than I remembered.

We stayed at Base Backpackers in Auckland (population 1.2 million) and were very excited to hear about the "Sanctuary" which is an all-girls floor and for a couple of dollars extra, you can have your very own fluffy, white towel, Aveda shampoo (sorry Hadley), and 100% Egyptian Cotton sheets and feather comforter! You know Meagan was a sucker for that one... and I was secretly also!Auckland's famous "Sky Tower" at night. It's 196 meters high and is the highest bungee jump in the world... I didn't do it though!