On our last two days in this part of the world, we visited Auckland, located on New Zealand’s North Island. What we found was a very friendly and beautiful city. Here are the highlights.
We toured the city by bus and walked throughout its downtown area, especially near the sea.
The bus tour began with a drive around the city’s port basin.
We also took a drive through some of its residential areas.
Its skyline included a building locally called the “toilet seat” building. Can you pick it out?
Sadly, we never made it up into their space needle.
Our Aussie guide and our Scottish Kiwi bus driver got into quite an exchange when comparing their home city’s harbor bridges.. It seemed to be all in good fun though there is quite a lot of competition between the two nations.
Our bus drive though was quick to counter with Auckland’s Team New Zealand, and that they currently hold
Auckland also has a War Museum that is a must see. It was built after World War I because of all the Kiwis killed during that war.
It was well done and included later wars and the Maori warriors as well.
We even got to see more about the Maori culture.
They were great seamen,
This is a Maorian war canoe.
It carried about thirty men.
We especially enjoyed driving around their harbor basin,
which offered a different type of New Zealand landscape,
but no less scenic!
As you’ll remember, while in Australia we never got to see a Kangaroo in the wild. The same was true for New Zealand penguins.
We left Auckland to go back to Sydney for a fourteen hour flight to Los Angeles. It was October 9, and by then we were beginning to notice the hurricane brewing in the Gulf of Mexico back home. Unfortunately, he grew into a monster storm and got to our area in the panhandle of North Florida about the time we flew into Atlanta. It would be more than 24 hours before the roads were cleared enough so we could drive the rest of the way home.
