Nope this isn’t an Onion article. Tom Currie is a 24-year-old Auckland man who was burnt out at his job and decided to quit in order to catch’em all.
“I wanted to have an adventure. I have been working for six years and I was desparete for a break. And Pokémon has given me the chance to live that dream.” – said Currie
So he decided to grab his backpack and armed only with his phone he will be traveling New Zealand for the next 2 months trying to capture all the Pokémon. Currie has booked 20 bus trips around his native country and visited six South Island towns. So far he has manage to capture 90 of 150 Pokémon in the game. Meanwhile I have barely left my house and already managed to capture 54!
From all the ground Currie has traveled he sleeps well at night having walked miles hunting sometimes until 3:00 AM. Yikes. However outside of the business trips his adventure has been realatively cheap. He has been able to sleep on friends couches and backpacker dorms. Companies like Uber caught wind of his story and offered him free rides.
“I think the most exciting experience so far was in Sumner, Christchurch, which has become a hot spot for Pokémon hunters,” Currie said.
“There were about 100 people there hunting. And some of these people would usually be shut up at home and really reclusive. Hunting for Pokémon is bringing them into the real world. It was such a buzzy atmosphere, when someone spotted a rare Pokémon they would shout out to alert the crowd.” Follow along and watch people hunt on Twitch!
The Pokémon craze has swept the nation like nothing we have ever seen before. Weekly users have now surpassed that of Twitter and Tinder and it has only been out a little over a week. The app helped boost Nintendo’s stock by 86% so far and continues to climb. Their overall company value has now reached $17 Billion.
