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