April 8th-10th

It's 8am and I'm sitting outside by the Hilton on the water.

I flew United from Pdx to Lax. I had a few hour layover, so Maderis was kind enough to power through LA traffic to come hang with me in the international terminal over Mexican beer and eats. It was great to see Rick in person. The phone isnt my strongest medium.

The flight from La to Akl was loooooong! Qantas is a super airline with FREE on demand new realease movies in every headrest(I promise this isnt a commercial!) I watched 4 movies to pass the time. The Wrestler, Quantum of Solace, Ghost Town, and Yes Man and a couple episodes of Little Britian in America(funny shit!)

9:22am

We landed during the wee hours of the morning on Good Friday. I eventually made my way through the gauntlet they call Customs, only to hear my name being called over the loud speaker asking me to go to Luggage Services, where I found out that my backpack was missing(since then it has been found and is supposedly enroute to the hostile.) I took the Airbus to the #5 stop downtown, the sun still hadn't broke the horizon so I had time to run down to the water and take some magic hour shots.

My hostel is called the Fat Camel. It is sandwitched between two humps aka stripclubs. One of them claims to specialize in massages. I'll take their word for it....

6:50pm
I took a power nap in my room....or tried to. I awoke an hour later to a Brazilian couple standing over me trying to explain in broken English that I was in their bed. The room consists of two adjacent bunk beds. When I checked in I naturally took the one that wasnt littered with someones dirty socks. Hating confrontation as I do, I apologized and climbed on a top bunk of the other set and tried to catch a wink. 15 minutes later im nudged by Tom, an Irish lad, who claims im in his bed. Long story short, they over booked the room and gave me my own room that has its own double bed! See...it always works out. Now Im off to go shoot some night shots with a tripod and theres no doubt that I will be downing some beer in Jesus' name. Peace!

Watched Requim for a Dream with the flat mates. They spent the entire time talking about who had the strongest accent(the Californian) and argued about who was the better checker player(unanimously NOT Kelvin!)

more later.......