Arrival Auckland

Kia Ora! It will be a winter of summers in my first year of retirement! First Chile in December and now New Zealand … ironically with a winter-like trip to Florida in between. Alex dropped me off at Fort Lauderdale airport after completing the Midwinters in Key Largo to meet friends Stef, Brian, Mark who are really living large on a 3-month tour of New Zealand from South of the South Island to the northernmost tip of the North Island. After two days on my own in Auckland, I will connect with them in Blenheim (northern part of the South Island) then up through Picton, Wellington and then to Taupo before heading home. We’ll also be joined by another friend Cyndee who is also doing a partial trip with them.

I got super lucky on the 30-hour trip in the cheap seats: full rows to myself on both legs of the journey! Being able to get horizontal was a huge win. I got even luckier when I arrived at my Marriott hotel at 8am expecting just to store luggage but was able to check into my room. Nice!

The highlight of Auckland was the NZ Maritime Museum. I have been fascinated with Polynesian navigation since a rainy museum day in Hawaii 12 years ago. The exhibits of gaff-rigged catamarans that could navigate thousands of miles in the Pacific with no modern or European tools such as time pieces or sextants (much less GPS) and find the hundreds of tiny islands in the vast Pacific is just jaw-dropping to me. They also had exhibits with great pride in their America’s Cup successes (and failures) to Dennis Conner’s “tricksy” catamaran in 1988. After the main tour was done, the guide showed me a “Dirty Dennis” sticker on the backside of one of the exhibits scales. The rest of the afternoon was spent walking and shopping Queen Street with an early dinner at the Commercial Bay food court. Kiwis love their food courts! Seemed like there was one every block or so.

Day two’s weather was too overcast and blustery for some of the suggested attractions (ferry ride, Sky Tower), so I reluctantly opted for the War Memorial Museum which (thank goodness) was more NZ History, Culture and Natural History than War Memorial. The place was huge and had really good and interactive exhibits. There was even a simulation of a volcano erupting in the harbor, complete with earthquake and tsunami (thankfully they skipped the silica plume or large volcanic rocks hitting!) Even skipping the war stuff, I spent a good 2 1/2 hours roaming.

Taking the bus saved my legs to spend the rest of my last day being a sailor fan-girl. The Sail GP folks were in town for the Sail Grand Prix Auckland. There are not too many places where sailing has sold out bleacher seating! Sadly for them, the weather was causing major scheduling delays, which meant walking Waitemada Harbor with all the land-based infrastructure was all I got to see.

Tomorrow morning, it’s off to meet up with my traveling companions at the Marlborough Food & Wine Festival!Read more