Sunday, April 22nd, 2012: Auckland, New Zealand
Bob: When we awakened shortly before sunrise, the Sea Princess was already edging her way toward her berth at Princes Wharf, right beside the Hilton Hotel in Auckland's harbor. Fortunately, this time we were looking out over the harbor on our side of the ship rather than looking directly into the hotel rooms and apartments across the pier, which had happened on our last cruise to New Zealand and had felt a bit odd. |
Monika: We had been in Auckland before. At that point we had walked all the way to the botanical garden and conservatory and the New Zealand Museum and War Memorial. This time, we decided to go on the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus to see some more of the city. Bob also wanted to see the Maritime Museum and we thought we would keep that for the afternoon. Coming into Auckland Harbor was again a lot of fun. Right on the pier next to the terminal is a Hilton Hotel and an apartment building. So we had people watching us from their balconies. What fun for them and us. On the other side was the ferry terminal and we thought, next time, we will take a ferry to one of the islands across from Auckland. |
Bob: Princes Wharf is smack dab in the middle of downtown Auckland, and since it is a city of 1.3 million people with far-flung suburbs, I was happy that we could just walk down the gangway and into the downtown area. But we didn't figure anything was happening until 9:00 a.m., so we had a leisurely breakfast before disembarking. Although we were tempted by the Hop-On, Hop-Off ferry boat system serving all the islands in Auckland's harbor, in the end we decided we really had not seen that much of the city itself so we opted for the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus, which cost $40 NZ apiece. From the pretty old ferry terminal, we caught the first HOHO bus to depart at 9:30. Since they were running a "summer" schedule, the HOHO loop out to the New Zealand Museum was running every half an hour and the "satellite" bus loop freom the museum to the interior of Auckland was running every hour. We took advantage of the layover wait between the main and satellite buses to re-visit the conservatory just down the hill from the museum. |
Monika: After the ship has docked, we hurried off the ship. At a kiosk we bought tickets for the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus and hurried to catch the first one. Our first stop was supposed to be a beach area, but there was a race going on since it was Sunday and that road was blocked. Instead, we curved back through different suburbs up a big hill to the war memorial and museum. The HOHO system had two loops that intersected at the war memorial. We got off our bus, but found out that the first bus for the upper loop was only coming in an hour. But here we were right in the botanical garden, close to the conservatory. I remembered it as quite beautiful, and thought it would be easy to spend an hour there. |
Bob: The conservatory has two big old greenhouses, one for seasonal plants and a heated one for tropical plants. We visited the seasonal one first and were rewarded with a huge bouquet of fall flowers in full bloom. Some, like mums and a jalapeno pepper plant (brilliant red peppers!), I recognized, and others like the "Christmas Cactus" that blooms in the late fall, Monika recognized, but still others were a puzzle to us both. The tropical greenhouse featured exotic plants like the huge lilly pads and lotus flowers that were in full bloom in a centrally-located pond. Above the pond were some of the largest pitcher plants I have ever seen--measuring them with my hand-span, I estimated that the largest was a good foot long and three inches or so in diameter. That could catch a really big insect down at the bottom! Most of the tropical plants were, of course, harmless. When we returned outside, Monika recalled there were statues in a vine-covered breezeway beside the central reflecting pool, so we searched for them and somewhat to my surprise found them right where Monika thought they would be. Since we had to walk back uphill to the museum to catch the satellite bus, we hustled through the fern grotto located between the two greenhouses and then hot-footed it back to the bus stop. |
Monika: The conservatory has two hothouses with a rectangular reflecting pond between them. Both houses were full of colorful flowers and even vegetables. We had a great time taking pictures and admiring all the different flowers. There were even a couple of statues that lent themselves to pictures. Off to one side was a fern garden with an amazing collection of small and large ferns. It was fun walking among them and enjoying the coolness. |
Bob: We took the satellite HOHO bus over to the Mount Eden stop and there we "Hopped Off" for a leisurely walk to the summit. Mt Eden lies just at the edge of the downtown district and we had fantastic views in all directions over Auckland and environs. It is only when you see how extensive the suburban area is around the downtown that you really believe there are 1.3 million folks living there. |
Monika: By now the hour was almost over and we hurried back to the bus stop. This bus took us to the highest point of Auckland, Mt. Eden. It was an extinct volcano. We had to walk the last mile up to the top, since the bus could not go up the narrow road. Getting closer to the top, I was surprised to see an actual crater, all overgrown with grass. We had fantastic views of Auckland from all around the crater. I was astonished at how extensive Auckland was. Suburbs seem to be on all sides of the mountain. Finally, we decided it was time to walk back down. We came to a smaller secondary crater, and I decided to take a different way down. Of course, we got lost, but another couple set us straight. We had to go a little bit back up and then we found the bus stop easily in plenty of time to catch the next HOHO bus. |
Bob: Hopping On the next bus on the satellite loop an hour later, we rambled past the Zoo and a place called MOTAT, which I learned was an acronym for Museum Of Transportation And Technology. MOTAT even had an old aircraft exhibit section, so I was sorely tempted to Hop Off again, but in the end we decided to get back to the ship, have lunch, and then do the maritime museum. But we also had a shopping list, to wit: bandages, envelopes, razor, and miscellaneous snack food. So when we returned to the ferry terminal, we walked to a small Westfields Mall shopping center a block or so into town and scouted around for a likely store. We found the equivalent of a sundries store where we found the first three items plus some hair bands for Monika, but they sold no food items. The huge electronics and gadgets store on the top floor, however, did have a couple of aisles of snack (that is, junk) food and beverages (sodas, but nothing healthy like juice or milk, of course). I could not find any pretzels but we did stock up on licorice and potato chips and then headed back to the ship for lunch. |
Monika: From Mt. Eden the bus took us all around that part of greater Auckland. We could have gotten off at the zoo. But even more appealing, especially to Bob, was something called MOTAT -Museum of Transportation and Technology. But we had not known, it existed, so we had not factored it into our plans. But I promised Bob, that next time, it will be on our list to do. Back at the war memorial, we caught the next bus doing the lower loop and now went through downtown Auckland, where we had walked the previous time. We stopped at a little mall across from the terminal and picked up a few things we needed, like envelopes and bandages, and of course, junk food. Back on board we stowed our treasures and went up to the Lido deck for lunch. |
Bob: We dropped the groceries off in our room before heading out one last time to see the New Zealand Maritime Museum that was on the next pier over from us. Admission was $14 NZ each, but for anyone who likes ships and nautical history that was a bargain. The museum had three main buildings along the pier, each with two complete levels of exhibits, and I really could not do it all in the two hours we had available. We started with a short film on the settlement of New Zealand by Maori in the old days. The script was a somewhat idealized and drastically shortened account of the first canoes to bring settlers to the North Island. It was all constructed with computer graphics techniques (CGI), so it looked a tad artificial until you got used to that and concentrated on the story line. The movie only took 10 minutes, and we started off in the first building immediately thereafter. The exhibit galleries covered the range of time from Maori settlement to European colonization and on to the present. Necessarily, the exhibits discussed a corresponding range of characters from the original Polynesians to European whalers, missionaries, immigrants, and so forth. By looking at the outrigger canoes and larger double-hulled craft from different Pacific Island groups, I was able to somewhat better understand the development of those large, twin-hulled craft used for Polynesian settlement, an achievement that never ceases to amaze me. |
Monika: By now it was 2 PM. We decided to try the Maritime Museum which was right next door. It was indeed open till 5 PM so we decided that was enough time to get a good idea what the museum was all about. It really had quite a mixture of modern maritime things but also old Polynesian crafts and history. It was such a wonderful mixture that I was fascinated too. We had audio to go with it, so we got a lot of explanations by simply listening. One interesting bit of trivia was that in the 1970's Lloyds of London tried to become PC (politically correct) and decided to call ships 'it' instead of the traditional 'she'. This met with so much opposition, that they soon reversed their decision. |
Bob: The European contact was also, of course, documented. I was curious why after Abel Tasman, sailing for the Dutch, touched on quite a few islands in and around New Zealand, a full century and a half then elapsed before Captain Cook made a second contact for the British. Why didn't the Dutch or anyone else follow up more quickly on Tasman's discoveries?? Were they kept secret by the Dutch? In any case, the British did follow up on Cook's explorations around New Zealand, and after the treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand effectively became a British colony. New Zealand was never a convict colony such as New South Wales in Australia, but British immigrants did come to swell the population. One exhibit that delighted me, as I'm a GPS addict, was a detailed explanation of the Global Positioning System. In particular, the exhibit explained what the WGS 84 datum was, which I had never known. Apparently WG S84 is a special set of numbers to model the exact non-spherical oblateness of the planet earth. I had always known that using a GPS with the wrong datum specified could lead to serious position errors, but now I finally understood WHY that was the case. Eureka! We had to rush through several exhibition areas (i.e., I didn't have enough time to read everything!), but we did manage to complete the final hall that contained a New Zealand America's Cup sailing yacht hanging from the ceiling. That has to be one of the most graceful man-made things I have ever seen, and with the dull black carbon-fiber hull and the brilliantly white fiberglass decks, it was a study in contrasts. So fast and so pretty! I was distressed to learn that the designer/builder of the successful New Zealand yachts, by the name of Sir Peter Blake, was killed by pirates on the Amazon River in Brazil just a couple of years afterwards. What a waste of genius! |
Monika: I was fascinated by explanations how things worked. In particular, there was an explanation on how to find south from the southern cross, which is not nearly as simple as using the north star in the northern hemisphere. One complete hall was dedicated to the sailor and ship designer Sir Peter Drake, who brought the America Cup to New Zealand in 2000 and defended it successfully in 2003. The ship itself was there in the hall, big and black. |
Bob: The museum closed for the day at 5:00 p.m. and a guard politely shepherded us out so that Monika did not have to use her crowbar to pry me out. In the gift shop out front I managed to purchase a few post cards, squish a couple of pennies into souvenirs, and even cadge a museum pen from the front desk lady before we really had to hustle back to the ship. We were in plenty of time for the 5:30 "All Aboard" deadline, but we really didn't have time even to shower before throwing on our "smart casual" clothes for dinner and rushing down to the Rigoletto dining room. During dinner we were given one of the nicest compliments by Roya, who together with Alex originally haled from Iran and had Farsi as her first language. She said that if we were like some of the other Americans she would not have been even able to eat dinner! It was nice to be complimented, but even Judy and Ian, both Australians, agreed that Americans are all too often loud in speech and rude in manners. I'm embarrassed that remnants of the "Ugly American" syndrome persist, but hopefully we don't fit the stereotype! After dinner, however, we let our tablemates sample the evening entertainment venues while we just collapsed back in our cabin. |
Monika: At about 5 minutes to 5 they started to politely herd us out of the museum, so I didn't have to use my crowbar on Bob. We stopped at the gift shop and spent our last NZ dollars on some cards, before heading back to the ship. |
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| Prolog | Map of Drive in Australia | Map of Transpacific Cruise | Epilog |
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