Pasifantastik

Hi guys. We know now what it is like to live in a big city (the largest in the Southern Hemisphere we are told).

It was a full day yesterday in Auckland -- full of crowds. First, we went to the Pasifika Festival, where some 200,000 other people went to celebrate Pacific cultures. Each culture had a huge section with food booths, craft booths and a stage. There were Tongans, Samoans, Nuieans, Cook Islanders, and so forth. It was a sweltering, teeming mass of sweaty brown flesh. That was actually one of the things that really struck us -- how many islanders and how few Pakeha (white people) were at the Festival. I guess I expected it to be a chance for Islanders to share their cultural heritage with non-Islanders, but the vast majority of attendees were Islanders.


Despite the heat and the crowds, the Festival did not disappoint. The music was marginal, and some was very bad. The crafts varied widely between beautiful hand-crafted treasures and dollar-store imitations. But the food ... the food. The smells assaulted you from every side. Lots of fish and shellfish. Mindy and I had mussel fritters, but there was also raw fish, fish curries, and endless tubs of fish goo. We still have not gotten used to all the seafood eaten here, so the mussel fritters were a safe compromise.

We also had a watermelon filled with fruit salad and ice cream.

The real lessons yesterday came in the area of transportation. Traffic was insane. We had been warned that parking was an impossibility, so we took the bus. With no air-conditioning and stand-still traffic for the last 5 kilometers, we were grateful to embark into the less stifling heat of the festival. When it was time to leave, the bus stop we needed was already overtaken with several bus loads of people waiting for the bus we needed. Plus, that bus stop was in the sun. In true Texas fashion, we decided to take whatever bus was stopping at the shaded bus stop. It took us in the opposite way of home, but close to a train station. So we bussed it across town and took the air-conditioned train home.

Then last night, there was a fireworks production (I dare say not a fireworks show, because it wasn't) in the Auckland Domain (huge park downtown). There were 60,000 in attendance at the fireworks event. We took the train to the event. It was so funny to watch people getting on the train with lawn chairs and chilly bins (ice chests). We left home at 5:30 pm for a 7:30 show start and the train was already packed. However, the real fun came when it was time to leave. I can truly say that watching 60,000 people evacuate an area at the same time is a site to behold.

We were near the back and got a jump on the bulk of the crowd, but were still in a massive crowd of people exiting the event. When we got to the road, the crowd was just walking down the road, across the whole thing (sidewalk to sidewalk). No cars were going to be moving around the park for a very long time. We high-tailed it to the train station with about 2,000 of our closest friends. We beat most and got to the station just in time to catch what I bet was the last train that was not bulging at the seams.

HERE are all the the pictures from that day. The weird ones were taken while waiting for the train.