Reading Length: Afternoon Cuppa Tea
Kristin Reporting!
I woke up super early today to get to the 7:30AM tour meeting
time. I was actually not feeling so hot myself today, but I was determined to
go on this tour. I wasn’t having the kind of “calls of nature” that Davin was
suffering from, and I had not vomited. I just kept having bouts of nausea. As
such, I didn’t worry about eating breakfast. I just did a lot of slow, deep
breathing, and walked slowly and calmly from one place to the next.
The bus was packed up with us tourists, and we were soon
off to tour the city of Auckland. The first thing we did was drive across the
Auckland harbor bridge. We drove across it in one direction, and one side of
the bus got a good view of the downtown city. Then we drove across it the other
direction, and the other side of the bus was able to take in the views! Lol!
Bus tours... *shakes head in amusement*
Our first actual stop was a photo stop in an
industrial sector of the city. It was a really crappy part of town, but it had
a good view of the bridge for photos. Unfortunately, it was a
stormy day so pictures of the scenery just show a dark dingy scene of threatening
clouds. There were a bunch of locals fishing here. One of them caught a fish
and threw it back. He said it was too small—it had to be a certain size for
them to be allowed to keep the catch.
Next we headed to the main site of the tour: The
Auckland Museum! The ship brought two buses full of people to the museum. When
we arrived, the museum wasn’t open yet. They let our groups in early and there
were a dozen tour guides waiting for us. As we filed in, they counted us off
into groups of 10 and sent us off with a guide. The guides gave us a tour of
the museum’s artifacts, and taught us about the Maori people, culture, and
their history on the islands of New Zealand.
As usual with ship tours, you don’t get enough time to
fully enjoy museums. After the tour completed, we got about 15 minutes on our
own which was mostly to give us a chance to buy things in the museum store. I
grabbed an English guidebook to share with Davin since he couldn’t make it to
the museum in person, and then headed to the Maori community house that was fully
assembled within the museum. You had to take your shoes off to enter. It is
undergoing restoration, but it was pretty cool to go inside it and see the
carvings and colors up close.
After we were loaded back up on the bus, we were
driven through a street of rich mansion homes. This was apparently the
Beverley Hills of Auckland. Then they dropped us for a few minutes on the top
of a hill where the Michael Savage memorial is located. The memorial had a
beautiful landscape of flowers. This was another viewpoint for photos of the city.
We had about 10 minutes here to snap some photos and then load back on the bus.
We were then returned to the ship.
When I got back to the cabin, D gave me the good news
that he would be released from quarantine at 4:00pm. The ship wasn’t leaving
until 7:30pm, so that meant we would have a few hours to explore Auckland
together.
We decided that we would walk to the Auckland Sky
Tower. It was only about a 20 minute walk from the ship. My little brother
would later describe Auckland to me as “a bit of a concrete jungle”, from the
little we saw of the downtown area, we are inclined to agree with his
assessment.
We reached the Sky Tower and paid for our tickets to
the top! The elevator going up had a glass floor so we saw the earth rapidly
fall away as we shot upwards. When we stepped out of the elevator, we were
surprised to see a clock counting down and there were only a few seconds to go!
Suddenly a body fell past the window outside! We knew it was orchestrated, but
it was still quite a shock to suddenly see a human body fall off a building!
We took in the beautiful views and then headed back to
the ship. We hoped to find some food on the way back. We’ve gotten completely
sick of the food on the Pacific Princess! The food quality is pretty good, but
the variety is very small—everything we like we’ve eaten multiple times
already. We found a Doerner shop. I wasn’t up for eating one myself—I was still
not feeling myself—but D was happy to get some tasty food! He said it was a
pretty mediocre Doerner, but he still enjoyed eating it more than ship food.
It was 6:50pm when we got back to the ship. We were
headed to the elevators when we heard what sounded like a sword fight! We
followed the sound into the theatre and caught the last 10 minutes of a group
of entertainers displaying Maori war dances, and singing Maori songs. They were
a very talented group of young people. It was too bad that we missed most of
the show, but we are pretty sure they saved the best parts for the finale!
We now have three sea days until we reach Sydney,
Australia. We are so excited to be getting off of this ship! Overall, the three
week cruise from Los Angeles to Sydney was pretty mediocre. If those three weeks
were our entire vacation, we would be very disappointed. The Pacific Ocean is
just too big. In three weeks, we only stopped in five countries (6 ports)! So, the
trip was mostly sea days trapped on a tiny ship that rocked and rolled on seas
that did not even seem very rough!
Interesting facts about New Zealand:
Total Population: ~ 4 million
Total Population of Auckland: 1.4 million
So one quarter of the country's entire population lives in the city of Auckland area!
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| Auckland Sail Away: Good Bye New Zealand! |
Next
Stop: Sydney, Australia (February 12, 2016)
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