“You Said This Would Be Exciting”

The weather gods of the South Island of New Zealand remained mad at me, so I called an audible and caught a flight to Sydney, where Zeynep would arrive shortly. (Quick aside: right after I left Christchurch a monster storm developed, dumping a full meter of rain on the South Island, forcing evacuation of some areas.)

On arrival in Sydney we were met by Zeynep's gregarious, Sydneysider uncle Ali, who promptly took us to one of Sydney's finest wining and dining establishments for tasty Peking Duck.

Ali also took us to a national park called, in a misnaming for the ages, Pittwater, which was significantly more beautiful and charming than the name suggests. There we met two Kookaburras, which make a laughing noise and are weird and cool looking.

While at Pittwater we ate at a restaurant that made outstanding food but took - literally - three and a half hours to do it. I forgot to take a picture of the amazing and amazingly long meal, so I present the aftermath.

After a lovely few days in Sydney with Ali, eating and going on runs to the Opera House and then repeating, off to Auckland. Where, in a coup for me, I convinced Zeynep to attend a cricket match between the national teams of New Zealand and India, ranked number 3 and number 2 in the world, respectively. The woman behind us who said to her partner “you said this would be exciting…” accurately conveyed Zeynep's feelings going into the match. But then it was exciting! Really! New Zealand's horrendous performance batting was compensated for by brilliant fielding and bowling.

While in Auckland, we also managed to grab dinner with our friend Max from Yangon. How's that for a sentence I never thought I'd write?

Auckland is the stepping off point for the next week of sailing the Hauraki Gulf, so our final morning was spent provisioning, something Zeynep has gotten very good at after two months in the Airstream!