“I think he’s coming back,” I heard somebody say.  I looked up and sure enough, through the windshield of the city bus, I could see the unkempt figure of a drunken transient sidling back towards the bus, unzipping his fly. 

“You’re fuckin kidding me,” I said to myself, as there was nobody for me to talk to, “He’s going to piss on the bus….” But a friend pulled him away before he was able to start his business.  There was a collective sigh of relief as the driver of the bus pulled away from stop.  Welcome to New Zealand.

I had arrived a day earlier than my parents, so I headed for downtown Auckland for a coffee, a sit down and a read.  The adventure on the bus ride back to my hotel was altogether unexpected, though as soon as I stepped on the bus I could feel the tension as the three vagrants talked loudly and hecked other passengers.

In my educated opinion, New Zealand is a bizarre land.  Here, the natives dress in colorful hotpants and tuck their bleached mullets under flat-billed ballcaps, tilted askew for effect.  The national idol (and subsequent nickname for any red blooded New Zealander, be they a JAFA (just another fucking Aucklander) or a RONZer (rest of New Zealander)… is a nocturnal prairie chicken.  From age 16, the youth of New Zealand are paid a national stipend, enabling them to forgo a typical teenage salary and feed their insatiable video game / fashion faux pas / ‘chillin’ desires unabashedly, funded by the country’s hard working tax payers.  It’s no wonder I heard a local once say that the youth of today seem to feel a sense of entitlement unshared by the generations before them.  I just wish she wouldn’t include me in that stereotype.

Let’s get down to business.  Instead of boring you with details of the entire journey (not that it was boring; on the contrary, I had a great time. But you aren’t me so you probably don’t care…), I’ll suffice it to say that New Zealand is beautiful, I enjoyed seeing it, and moreover I enjoyed spending time with my parents.  I’ll let these pictures do the talking.

The majority of these photographs are courtesy of Debra S. Morrell and Richard S. Sims.