Day 29 – Feb 12 – Auckland, New Zealand

Yesterday, Thursday for us, we docked in Auckland. Auckland is a city of about 1.5 million people. This is more than a third of all the people in New Zealand. We were in port from 8:00 am until 10:00 pm, so had a full day.

We started with a “hop on, hop on bus” that had 2 separate one-hour loops. We got off first at a rose garden. Since it is the ending of summer here, the roses were still in full bloom, but starting to lose some petals. They must have had 50 types, so Kathleen was happy.

We rode on to the war museum. (Not sure why the name, since it was more a natural history theme.) We saw lots of the Maoris (“original people”…we might call Polynesians) traditional items.

We went to Mt. Eden, the highest point in the city. This has the indentation of the original volcanic crater. While dormant, it could still erupt some time.

We did some shopping and lunch at an appropriate stop, then returned to the port.

We got adventuresome and hopped on a ferry boat for a 35 minute ride to a nearby island, Waiheke. May people who live here commute by ferry to Auckland each day for work. The sea was choppy, so Kathleen was doubting the wisdom of this idea.

The island has 25 wineries, so we thoughts we’d just have a tasting there. We had no realized that this would entail a bus ride, with no obvious indications of when we were to get off. When we thought we were in the right place, we got off, but learned we had to backtrack by foot about ¼ mile. Then the winery we selected was closed, but told us we could hike through the fields to one that was open. It was a 15 minute walk on hilly paths, so Kathleen gave back the happiness she had extracted from looking at the roses.

We only had 15 minutes left before this second winery closed, but still did tastings and bought a couple of bottles. We saw a cat who looked like he might be Luke’s distant cousin from New Zealand. The girl who worked the winery offered to drive us back to the ferry since she was getting off, so Kathleen was relieved that we did not have to walk back to the bus station.

Back at the ship, there was a show with Maori natives doing tribal songs, chants, and dances.

We now sail 4 days at sea across the Tasmanian Sea to Burney, Tasmania. This is supposed to be very rough water, so we are wondering how bad it will get.

Yes, there is such a thing as a Tasmanian devil. It looks different from the Warner brothers cartoon. It looks like a wolf with short back legs and an oversized head. It can be 3 feet long and up to 26 lbs. It is the largest carnivorous marsupial.