Kia ora! Welcome to Auckland, New Zealand and my travelog with too many pictures.
On Wednesday May 15th, I woke up to this impressive view:
And ate this fantastic breakfast:
The fruit is a feijoa (which I had never had before this trip) and I would recommend giving them a try if you ever see them in a supermarket. I was still a bit tired and sore from the day before (if you'll remember it was about 50 million miles of walking). So today I was going to take it easy. And I did! Sort of...
We needed to get some laundry done, so I packed up all the dirty clothes in my backpack and headed to the nearest laundromat. It was about a mile away and uphill. So far not a restful day. But I did get to pass right by the base of Sky Tower and this charming looking old church.
Laundry only took 45 minutes, so I loaded myself up with a backpack full of clean clothes and started back for our hotel, but I kept making detours. First, I stopped by Weta: Unleashed. It's a very touristy little...experience, I guess? It's a walk through of cool Weta Workshops minatures, etc. I just visited their gift shop, plenty of photo ops to be had without paying admission.
This seemed like a great opportunity to borrow the free wifi and do a video call with the kids. I took them on a virtual tour before I hit the street, heading back down the hill towards the harbor.
I spotted a few cute things in shop windows, so I ended up on a brief detour to get some souvenirs. Keep in mind that I still had 20 lbs. of laundry on my back. Then I walked right passed a grocery store, so I stopped in to stock up on picnic goods. I finally made it back to the hotel laden with so much stuff, I'm sure I looked like a crazy person.
I reminded myself that I had intentions to rest today, not spend all day on my feet, so I tried to take some time...but I'm not good at resting on vacation. I walked another half mile or so along the harbor to get to the fish market.
There I got some tasty fish and chips and watched a seagull carry off another persons entire meal because they walked away from their table for a few seconds. Never leave your food unattended folks! Otherwise it's assumed to be seagull food.
I took my time heading back, just snapping photos and enjoying the sunshine. By the time I got back Lee was nearly done working.
We met up and decided to go to the very nearby Maritime Museum. One of the big selling points here are the "heritage sailings" where you can get a ride in one of the old sailboats they maintain. We didn't splurge on a sailing. There are, however, a significant number of cool old boats inside the museum that kept us busy.
The first exhibit was dedicated to Māori and Polynesian sailing.
There were canoes and outriggers of every size. The biggest one wouldn't fully fit in a photo, so here's a partial of the giant outrigger, and a more complete regular sized outrigger.
The history of European naval exploration and immigration was well represented too. I learned that the famous Captain James Cook was one of the best cartographers of his day. His maps of the New Zealand coast were incredibly accurate, even by modern standards.
There was a huge exhibit on the sport of yachting that I didn't take a single picture of because by this time I was pretty darn tired. I hadn't rested on my supposed rest day nearly as much I should have. So rather than spend an evening out on the town, we hunkered down at our hotel and watched a movie, aiming for an early bedtime. So in that sense, I did manage to get a little extra rest after all!
On Thursday I had planned to visit the wildlife refuge island of Tiritiri Matangi, but due to inclement weather, the sailing was cancelled. I had to look at my back up plans and decided on visiting Waiheke island. It's a popular day trip destination because of it's beautiful beaches and dozens of wineries. It's like the Napa Valley of New Zealand: lots of people visit and millionaires build vacation homes there. I booked a ferry and the hop on/off bus tour. The first stop was a winery with this breathtaking view:
Apparently it's one of the most popular wedding destinations in the country, and I can see why! I didn't get off at the winery, I got off at Oneroa Beach.
Oneroa means "long beach" which is funny because it's actually not the longest beach on the island. But it is a beautiful beach. Since it was cool and overcast, I shared the beach with one or two other people and a few very assertive gulls who wanted to eat my snacks.
What was unique about this beach was the number and size of the shells that had washed up. I've never seen anything like it!
I didn't want to rob this beach of it's most interesting features, so I instead inspected and collected shells in photographs. Here's my little collection of favorites:
The tide pools didn't have any live creatures I could spot, but I found these big rocks to be very climb-able!
I found a great overlook of Oneroa (and Little Oneroa, the small neighboring beach) and that's when the sun finally came out!
Yes, the sun came out and I had no sunglasses with me. It was the perfect excuse to buy a hat!
I caught the bus and headed for Onetangi Beach, the longest beach on the island:
Plenty of room for hoards of summer beach goers (though definitely not enough parking.) But in late autumn, there were not so many people and hardly a car on the road.
I took a little path up the hillside so I could get the full view of the whole beach.
At this point I had eaten all my picnic snacks and really needed a water bottle refill. There was exactly one restaurant in town not closed for the season, so I ordered myself a chicken sandwich and chips and drank a gallon of their water.
Kicking back and watching a handful tourists learn how to surf was definitely the order of the afternoon. I'd take a photo, but none of them stayed up long enough. I caught the bus that would get me back to the wharf for the 4PM ferry back to Auckland, but it did make a stop at this lovely overlook which was, of course, at another winery.
I had almost 30 minutes to spare at the wharf, so I wandered over to where I could look at some of the small yachts and fishing boats in the bay.
Lee had wrapped up work that afternoon, so I told him he should visit the Weta Cave like I had the day before while I was on my way back.
I think it's pretty clear he enjoyed it.
Lee finished up his work that afternoon, so we spent our evening packing up and then went for a walk to get some fancy ice cream in celebration of a job well done.
In the morning we would head out of Auckland for one final adventure, but for tonight we feast on weird artisanal ice cream and appreciate the fact that when you order a "broken" cone, it comes with a chocolate label.
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