Birthday Boy

After spending most of the 6^th on a bus getting back to Auckland we spent the morning of the 7^th stretching our legs and getting a few of the necessaries before getting all dressed up to go visit the sky tower. You see it happened to be someone’s birthday and they though it would be a good idea to go up the sky tower for sun set and then head to the bar. So that’s what we did. Well nearly. After setting off a bit late and getting stuck in a bit of a queue due to a lack of staff at the sky tower, silly people only put one person on at a peak time, we just missed the sun set. But we still managed to get some day light to take in the view, but before long all the day light hours and had gone and the vast view had been replaced by that of the mesmerising city lights, which I managed to get some rather groovy photos (well I think they are see what you think). After fulfilling my photo taking need it was off to the bar, but this wasn’t an ordinary bar, oh no. we sat at 182 meters sipping cocktails and various spirits watching the city life go by in our rather posh rather comfy chairs, it’s a hard life. Eventually we couldn’t justify spending any more money on drinks so we header for home to find the other party people (there were a few other celebrating birthdays at the hostel) fast asleep, bunch of light weights, though Germans could handle their drink, so far there not doing to well this trip. The following day we had to be up and down town by 11 as we had decided to jump off a perfectly good bridge for no apparent reason, but don’t worry we’d be attached by our ankles to a long piece of rubber. I think this is supposed to be their idea of fun around here and is know as bungee jumping!!! So after turning up fashionably late our driver took us to base camp where we got kitted up and walked the longest mile. To get to the jump we had to walk about 10min under the Auckland harbour bridge on this very windy walkway from which you could see the rough waters of the sea below waiting to swallow you up. When we eventually reached the pod and got ready to jump I was feeling up for this, but after watching the first person plummet off the top I suddenly became a lot less confident. The order was done in height, heaviest first, so Davey went before me. After taking a practice jump he managed to through himself off the bridge and to the waters bellow. When he got back up he told me how ‘fricking awesome’ it was so momentarily I was ready to follow suite. But when I was standing over the edge I suddenly became less ready. But after psyching myself up I did it, I went for a proper dive off, well in my head I did. In reality I bricked it half way through so ended up ungracefully falling off the edge to the waters below, but I was off and Davey was right; it was frinking awesome! Once I got myself the right way up and back to the top I was shacking from the adrenalin rush and wanted to jump off again forgetting I was no longer attached at the ankles. But luckily for everyone I stayed on the bridge and walked back to land. In the afternoon we went down to the fan zone to watch the games. We had decided to support Wales for the first game, I love the Welsh, and England for the second, I hate the French. So to start with we were rather happy. A few thousand had turned out to watch the first game and most were supporting Ireland, so it was a good feeling to be cheering for the winning side and to se the underdog win. However for the second game the crowed increased in size and most were supporting la frogs, so this time it was a rather embarrassing feeling to be cheering for a team playing so badly and been surrounded by jubilant French people, but I guess it’s a good life experience to put on the C.V somewhere.