Though our flight from the Cook Islands was only 5 hrs long, we left on the morning of the 5th and arrived in Auckland on the morning of the 6th. Crazy international date line!
Auckland is a very cool, fresh and international city. It is filled with coffee shops and about a zillion Asian cuisine restaurants. Queen’s Street is the downtown and it always seemed filled with life. Albert Park and Auckland University were perfectly manicured, bright green and right next to the City Center. I was most excited that their public bathrooms had toilet paper! I know, it’s the simple things.
Auckland also greeted us with the feeling of Christmas… even though it is summer here.... One of the buildings had a 100 ft Santa Claus figure and two reindeer too boot that seemed to fill the intersection. The stores played Christmas songs, and another store had a 6 window diorama of mice acting out classic Christmas scenes. Knowing that we were both spending Christmas away from our families, we both reveled in anything “Christmas.” We even bought a small Christmas wreath for our dashboard.
Most of our stay in Auckland was to get some major errands done. Over the course of a few days, we got our Chinese VISA, added more pages into our passports, worked at getting our “Japan-Rail” tickets, and sent our passports to the Indian Consulate in Wellington to pick up the next week. The passport errands were rather nail-biters (what if we don’t get our passports back in time? What if they lose it? What if we are denied entrance to their country? What if I filled out a portion wrong and they say I have to resubmit it?) But we were successful in everything we could get done in Auckland except for the Japan Rail Pass—will have to do in Christchurch! We also didn’t have our passports and were hoping and praying the Indian Consulate would grant us a VISA (or at least not lose or passports) in Wellington.
However, it was not all work (ok, travel work. Not like work-work, but still not as cool as playing). We took a ferry into the harbor to Weiheke Island which is famous for its great wine and even greater olive oil. We only had a couple hours there but were able to get a good overview of the island and taste the most amazing olive oil ever made. Yes, I said it, now you have to prove me wrong. =o) It is an island full of bright green rolling hills and drastic cliffs that run straight down into bright turquoise bays and white clean beaches. We couldn’t believe how bright all the colors were; especially the greens and the blues. Little did we know that New Zealand is chock full of bright greens and bright blues. Not too bad, I’d say!
We also went canyoning (it’s called canyoneering in the USA) just south of Auckland in a temperate rainforest. Canyoning is where you put on a wetsuit, wetsuit gloves, wetsuit shoes, ridiculous shorts, and a helmet and jump, slide, swim, rappel (abseil) down a freezing cold river along a steep canyon. With 20 meter jumps into pools of water, rappelling down huge waterfalls while pounds of water beat against you, and tons of other crazy death defying acts, Mike was in his element, and nothing could wipe the grin off his face! The group consisted of a really cool guide originally from Chile who gave us one of his own personal music CDs when we commented how we liked the songs, a very scared looking 19 year old Australian young man, and the two of us. We also met and fed Albert the freshwater eel. Yes, they look just like Ursula’s eels, but these eels are harmless to humans and loves chicken apparently. He was hanging out in his own private pond and seemed to be happy to see our guide, or at least our guide’s food. We had a great time adventuring and soon we would find out that this was first of many times we would be wearing wetsuits in New Zealand…
No comments:
Post a Comment