Graham Hughes and Oysters

This was a long holiday weekend here in the city, Monday being Auckland Anniversary Day, commemorating the arrival of New Zealand's first governor, William Hobson, in 1840. Down at the waterfront, the Auckland Seafood Festival ran all three days. I decided to head down there with one of my new friends here and check it out. My only real mission was to eat some New Zealand oysters, which I accomplished. They were quite good, but nowhere near as cheap as Apalachicola oysters, but then again I was at a seafood festival in the nation's largest city. As a future mission, I'll have to find the NZ equivalent to Apalach, and a good dive bar serving them raw.

A Selection of the Local AquaFauna

View of the CBD from the Seafood Festival

After the oysters, we decided to try the "Wild Seafood Challenge" - basically a long line for an overpriced sampler of 6 "wild" seafoods. The only one I'd actually call "wild" was sea urchin, and of course they were out of that by the time we'd gotten to the front of the line. However, in the course of getting ripped off I met a very interesting individual named Graham Hughes, who just happened to be in line next to me. Graham is closing in on his attempt to be the first person to ever visit every country on the planet without using an airplane - just ground and water transit, and he can't drive or captain it himself. He's knocked out 194 out of 201 (by his count - Mike, vet this). All he has left are a few hard-to-reach island nations and a return trip to Africa to visit South Sudan, which became a country after he'd left the continent (d'oh!). So check out his website, like him on Facebook, etc, because he was a cool guy and he's found something genuinely interesting to promote himself doing (yes, I hate him).