Apologies...And a word on the Fuck Bus

Well, once I started this tour, I stopped writing in my journal, which is a real shame because I had more amazing experiences during my 3 weeks in NZ than any other trip. But I have a really good reason for abandoning my writing. Listen:

That first morning, as we were driving around Auckland and I pulled out the bus itinerary to figure out which cities I might like to stay longer in, I made a startling discovery. I had signed up for a 17 day tour, meaning that if I followed the current bus I was on, leaving every morning when it left to a different city, it would take 17 days before it returned to Auckland.

I was in NZ for only -19- days.

I buried my head in my hands. That meant I was going to have to follow the bus all the way through the trip, moving to a new city every day - and of course, you want to party when you get into a new city - so drinking every night and then waking up at the crack of dawn to load onto the same bus and driving to a new town to do it all over again? Add into that equation all the crazy zany things to do in New Zealand at every stop along the way?

And as it turned out, a lot of the travelers on the bus were in the same boat as I was. You stick 20 or so young and crazy boys and girls from across the world in the same bus every day, unload them into the same bar and book them into the same hotel every night... and ladies and gentlemen you have the craziest moving dorm party in the world. Hence, the nickname...

O yeah, I didn't get around to sleeping very often, much less writing. It was great, and I'll never do it again.

So from here on out, it'll have to be a photo journal. But I really don't like photo journals, because with travel literature, you can look at 1000 pictures and you still don't have a story. So this is going to be a work in process. I'm going to dive back down into those fuzzy memories and try to put the good stuff down into pixels. Bare with me if you've actually read this far - I think it'll be worth the wait.