STARTING NEW ZEALAND; AUCKLAND.

We arrived in Auckland in the late afternoon and were greeted b y a man from the travel agency who gave us our vouchers for NZ. He also sat us down and gave us a brief overview of our itinerary, with lots of good advice thrown in. We then took a shuttle to our hotel, which was located in the heart of downtown Auckland, on Queens Street.

It turned out that Queens was a really lively part of town! The first night we watched a demonstration for an increased minimum wage pass down the street. The sidewalks were quite busy after that. We grabbed some kebabs at a funky little place and headed back to our room

The next morning we were picked up by the car rental shuttle and taken to their office to pick up our car. It was a Silver Corolla! Actually a 2004, so nearly identical to our own. Now I got to learn how to drive on the left side of the road. It’s a little weird at first. Highway driving is fine, but urban travel is a little stressful. Especially the round-abouts! Holy cow, they have multiple lane round-abouts that can drive you nuts.

We made our way back towards our hotel but stopped at One-Tree-Hill for the spectacular vies of the city and harbor. Then, into the Auckland Museum. It’s a huge place that contains lots of Maori and White history. There is a gigantic Maori war-canoe, it holds 100 people and was about 250 feet long. Also a Mitsubishi Zero and Spitfire from the WWII exhibit. There was a large natural history collection which contains probably the only Kiwi we’ll see. The Polynesian exhibit was very impressive. We could have spent a lot more time there but our parking was limited so off we went. Dinner was at a small Mexican Restaurant which had pretty good food.

Next day was a cruise across the harbor to Devonport. We had a ferry pass so after we toured that village we road the ferry across the harbor again, just because we could!

Auckland photos.

Next morning we were off on the road to Rotorua.