Backpacker #1 | Flip flops, Malaysians and a picking up artist.

My Flip Flops.

If you are sharing a room with my dad and you have the bad luck that he falls asleep before you, then you will probably have trouble sleeping that night due to his snoring, which can be heard from the next room. The night I spent in the hotel in Phoenix, my mind didn’t give me a break to relax and try to sleep, I was nervous about what I was about to do the next morning. I was going to take a flight to the other side of the world, to the land of the Hobbits and the All Blacks. The moment I heard the first snore in the bed next to mine, I realized that I wouldn’t sleep well that night.

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^{The view from the plane leaving the American continent. Image by @cnandofer}

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Six hours of flight to Hawaii, twelve hours waiting and a little nap on the beach and ten hours more in a plane later, I was finally in New Zealand. My first impression was that it looked more like the United States than Mexico (it is easy to judge when you do not know, but it was true). I took the bus downtown, I checked-in at the hostel and I went to bury myself under the sheets of my bed for about 8 hours, I was completely destroyed.

The last time I bought flip-flops that were more than 30 USD was while I was still in Monterrey, I bought them in one of those sports store where you can find the same shoes, the same flip flops or the same clothes as in any other store but 20% more expensive because of the name of the store.

They were good flip-flops though, the best quality I've bought in my life. They were Puma flip-flops in fluorescent orange very comfortable, I could use them for days without feeling any discomfort and above all they were very resistant. They were so good that I would surely use them nowadays four years after, but a motherfucker decided to steal them while I was sleeping my first hours in New Zealand, after my almost 26 hours of travel.

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The nights in Auckland.

When I woke up it was 10 o'clock at night, a good time to venture into what was one of the most important reasons why I stayed in that hostel: The bar !!! "Shavita", the person that motivated me to go to New Zealand, had told me that in the bar of this hostel there were parties every day of the week and that it would be the best place to meet people. I spent 9 days and 8 nights in Auckland, every night I headed to the bar to meet girls from Germany, Argentinan, Uruguay and every other country. Of those eight nights, two times I ended up in the bathroom vomiting, three times I ended up in the Irish bar that was two blocks from the hostel, two nights in the restaurants of the Auckland marina and one night in a room that was not mine, in a hostel that was not mine.

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^{Night time in Auckland. Image by @cnandofer}

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The Malaysian mafia.

I had a great time every night, however, my savings were not going to last long enough if I kept living like that (spoiler alert: They did not last). The first day that I didn’t feel too hungover to get out of bed before 1 o'clock in the afternoon I started to "talk" (with some translation problems) with a group of six Malaysians, who were going to do their paperwork to register with the agency of New Zealand taxes. As I had to do the same process and they seemed to know what they were doing, I decided to go with them and from that moment every time they said "let's go, let's go" I followed them with blind confidence because they made things very easy for me. They did all the research and I followed them to the best bank to open an account, to the best place to visit in the city, to the best pho soup restaurant. I had no idea what was a pho soup before I met them. They left Auckland seven days after my arrival, "we go to Te Puke, the kiwi season is about to start and you can make good money", was what they told me.

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^{Mt. Eden, one of the places where the Malaysians took me. Image by @cnandofer}

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Two days later, I was in a bus heading to Te Puke because if the Malaysians went to Te Puke I would also go to Te Puke. They were my first group of friends in New Zealand and although we had a lot of problems communicating, I really enjoyed spending days as a Mexican/Malaysian in Auckland, they were really nice people. Once in Te Puke I did not have much contact with them, I met them from time to time because Te Puke is not very big, but I started to make other friends and although we talked when we saw each other, our paths started taking different directions little by little.

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The house of Muhammed

I arrived at Te Puke at the same time as the hurriacan Pam, considered the biggest natural disaster in Vanuatu until that date, in Te Puke it was not that bad. I spent the first days playing pool, playing cards and drinking beer, there is not much to do in Te Puke and with the hurricane outside, there was no need to leave the comfort of the hostel, unless it was to buy more alcohol. Te Puke had just one hostel at the time, most of the people staying there were backpackers looking for jobs during the kiwi season.

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^{The hostel in Te Puke. Image by @cnandofer}

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When the hurricane was finish, people who knew about the kiwi business told me that the season was not going to start soon because of the rains of the last few weeks, the harvest seasons are capricious. I thought about leaving Te Puke, Shavita had recommended me to go directly to Christchurch if what I wanted was to make money fast, but I was having fun. In the hostel I met "Don Jose", "MK", "the Argentinians", "the little Germans", "Simon" and many more people who during the days insisted to me that I should wait for the kiwi season and during the nights convinced me to stay with shots of tequila.

The hostel life is quite fun, you know people from all over the world, people who have traveled everywhere, people with incredible stories of things that happened to them in Japan, in South Korea or in Madagascar. However, as much as I like the life of the hostel, my wallet was not going to support it for a long period of time without having a job, especially after my days of excess in Auckland. I needed to find a cheaper place to live, Don Jose offered me to go live with him in the caravan park (the Malasyan had offered me the same before). However, I do not know why but I didn’t want to live in a caravan park, I said no mainly because of stupid prejudices I had about the idea of not living in a house, which would change over time.

I ended up moving to the house of Muhammed, an Egyptian in his fifties who lived with his wife, a kiwi woman who was always sick and with a pale face. She was spending most of her time in her room smoking pot or puking in the bathroom. We had the theory that she had cancer but I never asked her or Muhamed what was the problem with her. The house was a two-story building with a large room that was shared by Lara, Flor and Antonella, another large room that was shared by MK and me and two small rooms, one for Simon and other for Thomas.

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^{Visiting around. Image @cnandofer}

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Shortly after living with Muhammed, I realized that it was not the best decision to move there. The house was far from the town, it took me about forty-five minutes to get to one of the edges of the town. The orchards and pack houses were on the other side so I needed about an hour and a half to walk to the places where I could get a job or I would need to buy a car. Apart from that, the shower broke down, we did not have water for a couple of days and Muhammed was a bit annoying when he was drunk. (Frequently)

After a few days MK and I, decided to go live with Don Jose at the caravan park. It was cheaper and closer to the pack houses, by then I had spent a little time at parties in the caravan park and I had convinced myself that this was the place I had to be. We had paid for a full week with Muhammed so we spent the last days visiting the surroundings of Te Puke, playing cards and practicing magic tricks, one of MK's favorite hobbies.

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Francisco the picking up master.

By the time we decided to move from Muhammed's house, the Argentinians had been gone for days and new people were coming into the house. One day, while we were playing cards and drinking beers in the kitchen, another Argentinian came into the house. Francisco, tall, tan, with body and style of a surfer.

Many backpakers living in Australia, at the end of their work visa, enroll in a school in order to have a student visa, with which they are authorized to work and can stay in Australia for longer. It was Francisco's case, he had applied for the student visa and was waiting for an answer, he was spending few months on vacation in New Zealand while he waited.

He traveled for a few weeks on the north island, spending most of his time near the beaches. He didn’t have a work visa for New Zealand, but other travelers had told him that around Tauranga there was a good place to find work cash in hand, a small town that called itself the capital of kiwi. Money was not a problem for Francisco, but he preferred to be in a quiet place, near the sea where there was the possibility of work in case that he had the need to do so.

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^{Te Puke, the capital of kiwi. Image by @cnandofer}

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At the bus terminal in Tauranga, while waiting for his bus to Te Puke, Franciso saw a girl who immediately caught his attention. A pretty blonde, lying on the grass in front of him, focused on her notebook in which she was writing without stop. Francisco had always been lucky with women, he had no problem crossing the meters that separated them and saying: "Hello, how are you? My name is Francisco". However his bus was about to leave so instead he opened his backpack, took out his notebook and began to draw. A hobby that he had since childhood and that improved during his years studying art in Argentina.

The bus driver, was asking for the tickets and started to take suitcases into the bus, "first the people who go to Rotorua", said with joy. Francisco looked at his drawing and looked again at the blonde across the street, he ripped off the sheet of paper from his notebook and approached the girl, "Hi, I have something for you, but I have to go now. My bus is about to leave." He gave her his drawing and left, in the piece of paper was the rough draft of a woman lying down writing on a notebook with a name and a phone number on the back of it.

Muhammed was going to pick him up in the center of Te Puke and take him to the house, the person who recommended him to contact Muhammed, had told him that he could get him a job if he needed it. Upon arriving to the house a Mexican and a German offered him a beer and played a game he didn’t know, at the end of his third beer, he received a call on his cell phone. The girl's name from Tauranga was Ponia, she was German and she was interested on going to Te Puke to meet him in the next weeks.

I left Muhammed's house the next day so I didn’t know what happened between Francisco and Ponia but I was definitely surprised by the skill of this Argentinian artist and it motivated me to watch YouTube tutorials, to learn how to draw girls while I’m waiting for something else.

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