Auckland = Fail.

oh my god, Adrian and I have had an *interesting* day. I will try to write it in short form, otherwise it might take a while. Here goes:

1. take day off work (Adrian takes half day)
2. take ferry to city and arrive around 1.30pm
3. 2pm. Have lunch at Mexicali, yum.
4. walk casually around the pier past the Hilton and around to the Museum side. Get a beautiful spot watching the waka being 'loaded' but got bored because it was only about 3.30pm and they appeared to be just waiting.
5. agree to leave good spot and go around to the viaduct side. Get told we can't go in because it's full. Hmm, so what do we do now? The main reason I wanted to go to the city was to see the waka and haka.
6. Walk back down Quay Str and find a small crowd gathering in front of massive TV screen. Find good spot and sit down. Get chewing gum stuck on shoes and jeans, ew.
7. 3.15pm. Wait. At least we will be able to see the waka and haka on the big screen, though it won't be quite the same.
8. 3.45pm. They are still doing tests on the big screen and it is not looking good. Begin to hear chants/waiata/calls from viaduct on speakers. At least the speakers are working.
9. 4.15pm. Screen is not working. Waka have already arrived. Karanga, haka etc. happening and we can't see it. Meanwhile, the crowd looking at the other side of the screen (the working side) is clearly happy they can see their screen, cheering and singing and flying flags. 
10. 4.20pm. Over it. Decide to get up and go home early (original plan was to see Dave Dobbyn/Finn brothers and go back over after that).
11. OMG. Got caught up in the worst crowd. Squished. An adult woman is crying. Kids are crying and shaking. People with prams are just.not.going.anywhere. People start shoving. Old people are sitting down on the benches around the edges trying to remove themselves. I lost Adrian. An Indian tourist says he has never seen anything like this in India. A nice man held apart the crowd for me to get through. That was so nice I started crying (!) and realised I didn't know where Adrian was so that made it worse. Finally got out the other side. Cops doing anything useful? Crowd control? Nope.
12. 5.20pm. Get on ferry. FYI the walk from the viaduct to the ferry would usually take 5 minutes at most. This one took us an hour. 
13. Have drink in cafe in Devonport. Go to New World to get snacks. Go to Navy base wharf by Navy ships to watch fireworks (awesome spot). 
14. 8pm. Watch fireworks. Neat!
15. around 8.10pm. Get in car to go home. Drive from here to home usually takes around 5 minutes. 
16. 9pm. Wonder if it will be quicker to walk home. Not out of Navy gate yet. 
17. around 9.30pm. Only just out of Navy gate. I decide to walk home.
18. 10.10pm. I get home. About 1 minute later Adrian gets home in car. So that drive took TWO HOURS.

I think this constitutes an Auckland fail. On the way home we saw news on the internet that thousands of people got screwed by Auckland's 'transport system' and were stranded in train stations, bus stations and ferry terminals.

*massive facepalm*

On the bright side, we are finally home, and watching the Tonga v NZ recorded game.