I'm too tired to think of a cool title tonight. ...

...but rest assured if I had it would be quite witty.

Today I went on a tour of Auckland, as sort of my last ho-rah in the city. We went to the sky tower, where much to my disappointment I was not a quick enough volunteer to get to do the sky jump... that's right one guy in our group jumped off the tower... lucky.

From there we went on to the Michael Savage memorial, a memorial to the first Labour prime minister of New Zealand, he brought socialism to New Zealand, was well respected and died of cancer after only four years in office.

From there we went to Mt. Eden, a dormant volcano, and sacred Maori site right smack in the middle of Auckland, the view from the top is one of only two places in the world that you can see two oceanic bodies of water that don't actually touch each other. To the east you have the bay connecting to the Pacific ocean, and to the west, another bay connecting to the Tasman gulf (between NZ and Australia). There is a crater in the top of the mountain that is beautiful, but we weren't allowed into it because the Maori (who still own the mountain) forbid it. The view here is stunning, as you can see for miles.

New Zealand is very tectonically and volcanically active. It is a very young land mass, the youngest on earth. And its formation process continues to this day.

A prime example, Rangitoto island in the Auckland harbor is a dormant volcano that was non-existent 600 years ago. The 5.5km wide, 850ft. tall (this is no pebble we're talking about) shield volcano erupted from nothing on the ocean floor and reached about half of its height in about 8 hours time, raising the rest of the distance over the next week. It only erupted once, and is now dormant. There were actually Maori living on an adjacent island in the harbor during the eruption. That island that now joins Rangitoto on one side. Imagine waking up to that little shenanigan occurring in your back yard swimming pool. Geologists expect that at some point in the next 100 years, there will be another volcanic eruption somewhere in the harbor that will yield similar results; making for quite a fireworks show to be sure.

Seeing how Auckland is laid out from the top of Mt. Eden, one realizes that it is actually on a fairly narrow isthmus that connects the two parts of the north island. This coupled with the fact that it is on top of a volcanic field, in which new volcanoes just pop up, who knows where, and grow to considerable size (ie. Rangitoto island, Mt. Eden, and several others in the area) really makes one wonder... was this really the best place to put a city? Maybe its just me, now I'm a pretty risk tolerant guy and all, but this may be taking it a bit far. Then again, I suppose for Frodo this may not be a bad proposition. Why go to Mt. Doom, when if he waits around long enough... Mt. Doom will come to him. Brilliant!

After that we had lunch, we went to the harbor bridge. Now merely for clarification, this is no small bridge. We walked on walkways suspended under the bridge to the center of the bridge (a ten minute walk; not for those afraid of heights or water), to a platform mounted under the tallest suspended part of the bridge. From this platform, if you so choose, you may bungee jump to your heart's content (for a nominal fee). No one in our group did, (as this jump was not free for the volunteer as was the afore mentioned sky tower jump) and so a guide jumped so the trek there was not entirely wasted.

The American election was followed very closely here today. Every TV screen I saw all day had coverage of the election on, and when I got home there were 2 or 3 channels on TV dedicated entirely to the US elections. One channel in particular had the New Zealand anchor seated in front of a green screen with a giant American flag on it for the duration of the coverage. It is fascinating to me that in the US, there are so few signs of the global society that we live in, (ie. when was the last time you clicked onto CNN and saw Anderson Cooper with a huge NZ flag behind him, covering the NZ elections), and yet when you travel outside of the US signs of a global society are ubiquitous, and the idea that we share in a world together permeates. That is a topic for another day perhaps.

There are fireworks everywhere tonight. Kiwis can only pop fireworks one day a year, for Guy Fox Day; celebrated in the UK and many of it's former territories. This is the same Guy Fox from the movie "V for Vendetta" if you have not seen the movie, google either Guy Fox or "the gunpowder plot." They take their fireworks very seriously here, it sounds a bit like a war zone, and has for the past several hours. I may not get any sleep tonight.