Day 38: Stragglers Headed Home

Wednesday, Mar 14th

Sheila and I were out of the hotel by 7 AM headed for the Sydney airport. Check-in was easy and we quickly passed through security. We spent our remaining Australian currency (plus more AMEX dollars) on gifts and last minute purchases.

Our flight, Delta 16 to Atlanta, with a stop in Los Angeles, departed as scheduled.

Perhaps the most memorable part of the today's trip was the LAX experience, some good and some bad. In LA we cleared immigration and customs using for the first time our new DHS Global Entry Trusted Traveler cards; they work great, no need for customs forms, bypasses all of the immigration lines and offers head of the line privileges for final customs check-out. That was the good experience, then we entered the LAX terminal. Here we had to reenter through security so it was back to throwing away unfinished drinks, undressing, hands over head scanning, surly TSA inspectors, etc. Once through security we headed for our gate; somewhere in Long Beach or so it would seem, with the distance we walked in the terminal. Delta's terminal is undergoing major renovations so the disruptions were many and the noise deafening. Anyway we arrived at our gate along with about 500 other people. Seems that Delta had scheduled two heavy jet departures, ours to Atlanta and the other to Maui, out of the same gate within five minutes of each other. Combining the renovation obstructions, the background noise and alarms, and 500 people crowding around a single gate made for a less than relaxing atmosphere. After a little pushing and shoving in the boarding mob, aka line, we were onboard, seated and ready to fly.

The balance of the day passed as planned with arrival in and departure from Atlanta as scheduled. Carrie was at the Norfolk airport, with drinks and Coastal Provisions sandwiches, to pick us up; we quickly collected our bags and were on our way.

Around 9 PM we arrived at our Kitty Hawk home.

Elapsed time of travel: 37 Days and 10 Hours
Travel Distance (transit and touring): 32,000+ miles

• Kitty Hawk to Norfolk
• Norfolk to Atlanta
• Atlanta to Los Angeles
• Los Angeles to Sydney
• Sydney to Melbourne
• Melbourne to Adelaide
• Adelaide to Kangaroo Island (R/T)
• Adelaide to Ayers Rock
• Ayers Rock to Cairns
• Cairns to Sydney
• Sydney to Queenstown
• Queenstown to Doubtful Sound (R/T)
• Queenstown to Franz Josef
• Franz Josef to Christchurch
• Christchurch to Wellington
• Wellington to Rotorua
• Rotorua to Auckland
• Auckland to Sydney
• Sydney to Los Angeles
• Los Angeles to Atlanta
• Atlanta to Norfolk
• Norfolk to Kitty Hawk 

So Ends A Great Trip!

Day 37: Headed For Home

Tuesday, Mar 13th

Chris and Denny were en-route early from the hotel to catch their flight to Sydney from where they would fly home to Scottsdale.

The other six of us had breakfast, spent or cashed in our remaining New Zealand currency and then headed to the airport at 11 AM.

After check-in we passed through immigration and security; we said our parting goodbyes and proceeded to our gate areas. Pat, Jack, Diane and Greg would be flying home from Auckland and Sheila and I would be en-route to Sydney before flying home on Wednesday.

While waiting in Auckland, Sheila was interviewed by a tourist bureau surveyor. The questions and answers spanned the entirety of our visit and probably took 20 minutes or so to complete.

We arrived in Sydney and checked in to the Stamford Plaza Hotel for a restful evening and preparation for flying home.

While checking email I found a new note from Denny; as they should have been somewhere high above the Pacific headed for San Francisco, this was not likely to be good news. After waiting through several flight delays, Chris and Denny's flight to San Francisco had been cancelled; they would fly on Wednesday.

Sheila and I had an easy dinner in the hotel; she had a club sandwich and I had a salad and spaghetti bolognese. It was simple but good.

We packed our bags and were ready to travel.

Day 36: Auckland

Monday, Mar 12th, 2012

Taco picked us up around 9:30 this morning. The day began with fog, rain and low overcast skies, our first day with unsuitable weather for our activities.

We decided to drive around Auckland for the morning and then allow time for individual activities throughout the afternoon. We traveled through several “burbs” of Auckland including a stop on top of an inactive volcano for a good overview of the city. Fortunately the rain stopped and getting out and around was okay. We visited the Winter Garden, a botanical hot house where we saw a collection flowers, fruits and vegetables. Perhaps the most interesting were the wide variety of eggplants and peppers as well as the orchid that smelled of vanilla and chocolate.

We traveled down into a beach town where we stopped at a small coffee shop for coffee, tea and hot chocolate. One amongst us even tramped over to the local Starbucks for a fix. We rode by the museums, the university, the dock areas and business centers. Rather than return as a group to the hotel, Taco dropped us off at various venues, Sheila at the Auckland Museum, Pat, Jack, Diane, Greg and me at the Marina and Chris and Denny at the Queen Street “retail therapy” area.

Sheila continued from the Auckland Museum, a natural history museum on to the Art Museum before returning to the hotel. Those of us at the marina found ourselves in the center of the Auckland Race Village of the Volvo Ocean Race. There were six sleek racing boats prepping for the next race leg, which takes them to Itajai, Brazil. In addition to the racing boats there were many mega yachts in the marina including huge sailing yachts such as Thalia and Imagine. In the village, we had time to watch belly dancing, watch a Volvo Race 3-D movie and try out the “grinding” simulator. We took the opportunity to stop at a couple of pubs for refreshments along the way including O'Hagan’s and The Occidental before returning to the hotel.

As for Chris and Denny, don’t know how much retail therapy one can stand, guess they’ll have to tell us.

For our last dinner we headed to O’Connell Street (get the connection?) and the, you guessed it, O’Connell Street Bistro. The meal was great, just one of so many dining experiences on the trip. My entrée was Hapuku Fish, others tried a variety of local and international dishes.

Following dinner we went back to the marina, this time all eight of us. One more time on the “grinding” simulator for me, this time breaking my earlier record and completing the task in less than 14 seconds.  We then walked amongst the various boats, bought more stuff and drooled over the Thalia and Imagine sparkling with their night lighting. Lastly we revisited O'Hagan’s for coffee and dessert, this time a nice brownie with vanilla ice cream. 









We took taxis back to the hotel, said our goodbyes to Chris and Denny as they were leaving about 6 AM Tuesday morning, long before the rest of us would be up and around.

The MART 2012 Australia & New Zealand Travelers

L to R: Diane, Greg, Sheila, Nick, Pat Jack, Chris & Denny

Day 35: Movin' On To Auckland

Sunday, Mar 11th

We were all up and packed before heading to breakfast around 8 AM. Helga and the Treetops kitchen staff served breakfast to order; seems that Eggs Benedict was a favorite but in my opinion the banana topped French Toast with lots of bacon was pretty good.

Taco, our driver for the day arrived for our transport to Auckland. Our schedule was relatively flexible but we did have a long drive ahead of us.

First on the agenda was a drive to the Waitomo Glowworm Caves to see the world famous glowworms (yes similar to the glowworms of Treetops but a better setting and many more to see). The glowworm caves are a commercial enterprise shared by the local Maori, local landowners and the government. We were met by a Maori woman who described the local geology that resulted in the caves and the life cycle of the glowworm, that would be Arachnocampa Luminosa (spider-like, light-producing larva) for the bug experts amongst us. For anyone that might wonder, yes we did break into a not so harmonic round of the famous song “Glowworm”. Upon conclusion of the scientific aspects of the visit we boarded a Disney like boat ride through a short section of the cave where we saw thousands of the glowing buggers.

Next on our agenda was lunch; we stopped at Roselands Restaurant at Waitomo where the guys had time for a brief lawn tennis match before dining. For anyone keeping score, the “Other” team beat the “Elkhartians” 1 set to nil.

We started lunch just in time to beat the arrival of what seemed like 100+ school kids, high schoolers on holiday from Malaysia, Japan or somewhere in the East. Lunch included a well assorted salad bar, a buffet arrayed with breads and vegetables as well as fish, steak, chicken or mussels from the grill.

Before we departed, Chris, having visited the gift shop, found an “adorable” sheep to purchase and take home to Scottsdale.

Onward we drove, heading north to Auckland. We stopped along the way for stretching and “rest”, if you know what I mean. Sometime around 4 PM we arrived into Auckland; finally we had found the big city. By now we were about done with driving, some had seen enough sheep and farmland and others didn’t want to bend their knees any longer. We checked in to The Pullman Hotel, had drinks and made dinner decisions. Sheila and I had room service while Pat, Jack Chris, Denny, Diane and Greg tramped the streets of Auckland in search of entertainment, sights and food. The group of six did "easy dining" down by the waterfront before proceeding back to the hotel for the night.

Day 34: Treetops

Saturday, Mar 10th

Denny, Greg and I were up early and ready to go golfing by 7 AM. Helga and the kitchen staff had coffee ready and were finishing up the sandwiches and packing our lunch bags for the outing. John, the manager arrived and provided directions to the course as well as keys to one of the four-wheel drive Land Rovers. All we had to do was navigate the back roads and highways and avoid contacting the wrong-side drivers for a one-hour ride to the Kinloch Golf Club.

We did in fact safely arrive at the course; however, not before we had experienced one close encounter with an oncoming red BMW on the narrow curvy dirt access road from the lodge. Nevertheless, all’s well that end’s well. As an aside we met the opposing driver on Sunday, turns out she was a 17-year old lodge staffer.

Anyway back to golf. The club pro, Tom Long, welcomed us to the course and possibly with some influence from either John the manager or owner, ensured that we had everything needed for our 18 holes.  The course proved to be tough; as mentioned it is a Jack Nicklaus design and could be said to be of a links design though we were reminded by Tom that to truly be a links course (as in the British definition) it needed to abut the sea. As opposed to fairways as we know it, this course seemed to be a series of landing zones bounded by rocky crags and fields of uncut grass. Where are the sheep when you need them? Approaches to the greens were never easy, always requiring a lofted shot of some sort. Then there were the greens, described by Denny as slow but challenging; the rolling greens made for serious study for break direction. Needless to say, we experienced all facets of the course; there were a few pars, a few more bogies and other scores I need not mention. All in all, we enjoyed the day and were pleased to have played while in New Zealand.

Back at the Treetops Lodge other activities were underway. The first activity was a jeep ride around the lodge property, some 1,500 acres of hunting, conservation and farm land. On the drive the ladies, Sheila, Chris, Pat and Diane were treated to a series of flora and fauna sightings including elk, water buffalo, deer, llamas, black fungi, any number of fern varieties, as well as birds. Upon return, breakfast was served. Alma and John Sax arrived for breakfast and hung around for a while before heading off to a relative’s wedding. Seems that Jack had some quality time with John during the morning and is probably best able to describe the Sax empire of New Zealand. Later in the morning the hikers, walkers or in NZ terms the trampers departed for a walk to the on property waterfall. Apparently the walk was enjoyable, only once was anyone lost. The balance of the afternoon was spent lunching on the patio and simply relaxing with good WiFi service.

By 4 PM the golfers had returned and together we all prepared for another round of drinks and dinner. During the pre-dinner activity period, the guys undertook a game of 8-Ball on what we would describe as the largest pool table we’ve ever seen. The game was not a quick one as neither the “Elkhart, Indiana” team (that would be Jack and Denny) nor the “Other” team (that would be Greg and me) could get the balls to enter the holes. After about 40 minutes the game finally ended with the “Elkhartians” as the victors. There would not have been time on this trip for a best of three series.

On to dinner we moved. Tonight Helga and Christian announced the entrees including salads for starters followed by pasta and a fish main course. To closeout the meal we were served a fancy dessert. After dinner drinks followed but our stamina was weakening, we were done for the night sometime around 10 PM.