Rotorua and the Chief

It's now Friday morning in New Zealand, which makes it midday Thursday in the US.  So for your today, which was our yesterday, we took an all day tour in Tauranga from Mount Manganui to Rotorua.  We saw farms and sheep and kiwis growing (think overhead grape arbors).  We saw abundant tree ferns, redwoods, crystal clear rivers and lakes and waterfalls.  At Te Puia, which is a Maori historic area, we saw geysers, fumaroles, mud pots and geologic conditions quite similar to Yellowstone.  

The best event of the day, however, was the Maori dance presentation inside the meeting house. But to get inside the meeting house, the audience "tribe" had to first select a chief, who had to bravely greet the warrior sent out to ascertain if the approaching strangers were friend or foe. I am happy to report that as Audience Chief Tom behaved himself, he was handed the fern leaf and they decided we were friendlies.  

I do have some pictures to post and even a video for posterity.  As soon as I figure out how to post this on the ship wifi, I will work on how to add the pictures.  

Our today, your tomorrow, is a sea day, so we can all recover from our adventures.  Tom is in the Japanese soaking tubs upstairs, I'm in the Coffee House with a cappuccino.  Enjoy your day, today!

It's been a little damp...

The remnants of typhoon Winston have been hanging over the North Island while we have been here in Auckland, making for a drizzly, wet, grey environment.  We haven't much minded that, being from a desert, but after three days one does hanker for a bit of blue sky and some sunshine here and there.  

The locals have been very apologetic about the weather, telling us that up until our arrival it "has been glorious".   Today (Wednesday) is looking a little better with patchy bits of blue finally visible, which will make for a nice day to board our ship.

The accompanying humidity has done some interesting things to our possessions and our selves.  Cheryl's normally dry, limp, sorta wavy hair has turned into a fluffy, curly mop.  The passports, kept inside the room safe, are beginning to curl at the edges.  After six days of travel we decided to launder the clothes we have worn, and it took four cycles in the dryer for each load of wash.  On the other hand, I haven't had to use a single drop of hand lotion, foot cream, hair conditioner, Chapstick or sunscreen.

Yesterday's weather meant we had to forego our intended harbour cruise and we instead headed over to the Auckland Museum where we learned about Maori culture, the battle of Gallipoli, and kiwis.  Kiwis are a bird, a fruit or a person; but they are all round, brown and sorta fuzzy.

A Day in Auckland

This is our first full day in Auckland, New Zealand. We got about 12 hours sleep last night, so hopefully, this post will sound a little more coherent than the last few.  We had a very touristy day today, and despite the ongoing showers randomly throughout the day, we had a great deal of fun. We visited the art museum in the morning and then we went on a three hour mini-coach tour around the city in the afternoon.  We saw all the major highlights, and then in the evening we went to the Sky City Tower for a view over the city and dinner at the revolving restaurant on the tower.  

Here are a few pictures....although I have only a few of our tour, as the rain on the glass made most of those pictures useless, LOL.  Like this one:

That's the best of all the raindrop pictures that were taken today. And believe me there were a lot that you couldn't even tell what was behind the raindrops.  (That tall tower in the distance is the Sky City tower)

Here are a couple for Betty because she loves the water lilies so much.

And these are for Dan, my orchid sitter.

And these are for everyone just because they were pretty at the Wintergarden.

You'll just have to pretend you can see the sheep on the hill at One Tree Hill, and the volcano at Mount Eden, and the shops in Parnell, and the yachts in the harbor.

I do have some from the tower and dinner:

Looking down through the floor of the observation deck.

Of course, I had to have lamb for dinner

Yes, it was delicious!

And I will end with a couple views from the tower at the end of dinner.

Made it!

After a really long and tiring, but uneventful trip, we are in New Zealand after only 23 hours of travel. We are having a lovely dinner at a place called Elliot stables, which is sort of an upscale food court. The restaurants are around the outside, the tables are in the middle and you order from the restaurants which then brings the food to your table. After this were going to go back to the hotel and crash. 

Hurry up and wait....

We had a lovely visit to Laguna Beach, saw my Dad as mentioned yesterday, and went to the Getty Museum this afternoon.  Absolutely gorgeous buildings, grounds and an incredible collection of art.  Much more than can be appreciated in just an afternoon, but it was a fun diversion.  Just as rush hour was beginning to hit it's stride, we headed back to the airport to turn in the rental car.  We allotted plenty of time, but even so, it took about one hour to travel ten miles.  This will not surprise our CA friends, but I just have to say to our Albuquerque folks that we have it pretty good traffic-wise.

I'm typing this on the iPad, and the pictures are all on Tom's phone, so I just went through a little half hour exercise in getting them sent via email to this device so I could post them.  Not very hard except it was a little tricky to get everything connected to the wifi here at the airport.  Anyway...here was our afternoon:

And, now we are at the airport very, very, very early whiling away our spare hours until we board the plane...about three more hours for that. At least they have free wifi, we can charge up our devices, and Tom has gone shopping while I guard the carry-on bags at our essentially empty gate.  Both of us freshened up and have put on our comfy clothes for the long 14 hour flight.  We'll have a 1-2 hour layover in Sydney and then a three hour flight to Auckland.  So basically, when you all get up Saturday morning and read this, we'll be less than halfway there, LOL.

Stopover number 1

We didn't go all that far, but we knew it when we started out. Landed at LAX without any trouble, had three seats for the two of us, got our bags, jumped on the Hertz shuttle, found the rental car and were on our way maneuvering through the LA freeway system within 45 minutes of landing.  Since when is LA that efficient??

 

53 minutes later we were at Dad's house having been told by Google maps that instead of the usual route (405 to 22) there was some traffic and it would be faster to take the parallel-ish route which was take the 405->105->605->91->5->22.We would never in a million years have thought to take that route instead, but it worked out to be faster than the direct 405.  Of course, the carpool lane helped immensely, too.

Had a very nice lunch and visit with Dad and Ilene and then jumped back in the rental car at 4:30 to try and make it to the condo in Laguna Beach.  Didn't think we had a prayer of making it by 5 when the office closed, but we got there with 6 minutes to spare.  At rush hour!  This is not the California road system either of us remember, nor the one many residents experience.

Made it to the condo and found we have an ocean view room after all...somebody checked out early and we got the room. 😄

That's all for now from our stopover for the night. This time tomorrow we will be checking in for our flights.

Here we go again....

Off to California, Australia, New Zealand