Leaving Auckland

Tomorrow morning (afternoon in Toronto), I'm leaving Auckland to set off and explore the rest of New Zealand. Because I'm planning on doing many excursions, and New Zealand has become such a tourist destination, everything is much more expensive than I thought (more than double what I budgeted). Most hostels here don't even offer free wifi (they make you pay for it)! So instead of staying for an extended period of time like I planned, I've trimmed down my time in New Zealand to leave on Dec. 10 to head back to HK, almost a week short of a month in NZ. And believe it or not, it will cost me almost as much as I spent in Japan in 6 weeks! I'm really amazed at just how expensive everything here is...I could've spent at least another month in Japan for the same price. But 3 weeks and few days isn't enough to really fully see NZ, and that's why I'm going to be mostly jumping from one town to the next almost every day.

To be honest, I didn't really come to NZ to "see" things (besides the nature), but more to do all the wicked adrenaline-junkie stuff they have here (which is why my costs are ending up so high)...it's not like NZ has that much interesting culture to look at (besides the native Maori people). So with limited access to internet (because I'll probably have to pay for it) and always going to bed early to wake up early the next day, I probably won't do as much blogging as I had hoped. I didn't even get to work on the remaining blogs about Japan over the past few days, even though I've basically just be chilling out most of the time (I only spent one real day wandering around Auckland, there's not much to see here), I've spent that time planning my trip...a lot more work than I thought it'd take (and I really didn't want to originally do it this way but because I'm taking a bus, I have to make the most of my time). So I'll try my best to keep the updates coming!

Now I'm off to bed, I have to wake up at 6AM here tomorrow.