New Zealand | FindPenguins

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Trip start
January 4, 2025
New Zealand Traveler
Auckland
January 4, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C
My initial impressions of New Zealand have been good. For example, I stayed at a hotel near the airport and then walked two miles to the train station with my suitcase. Three different people, pulled over, got out of their car and asked me if I was ok or needed help. I said I was ok and on my way to the train station and they offered to give me a ride. In Brazil I walked three block with my suitcase and some guy pulls a knife out on me. Also price seem cheaper then I was expecting. The first picture is an extinct volcano I walked by and the last three pictures are of the hotel I am staying at which is in Auckland and on a bay, for 70 to 80 dollars a night. In Austin a lesser hotel would cost twice as much.Read more
TravelerUh…could you please tell us more about the incident with the guy with the knife?
1/4/25Reply
TravelerI was staying at a hotel close to the cruise port. The hotel reviews are good but people say the neighborhood is unsafe in Sao Paulo. I had a ten minute walk from the bus terminal to the hotel along a busy roadway at 4:30 in the afternoon and some guy pulls a knife out to try and get some money from me. I was very surprised and the guy seemed even more surprised that I did not flinch when he pulled the knife out and he quickly hide the knife. So yeah, I am not recommending visiting Sao Paulo.
1/12/25Reply
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New Zealand Traveler
Mount Wellington
January 7, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C
I hiked up an extinct volcano today. This part of New Zealand has a lot of extinct volcanos. The weather has been great here with a high of 75 and a low of 60. In the last picture you can see both the west and east coast of New Zealand and the water is not connected. I think it is the thinnest strip of land between both sides of New Zealand.Read more
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New Zealand Traveler
Transportation Museum
January 10, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C
Went to the Transportation Museum today.
1. This is a high voltage AC to DC convertor used to power the cable cars at the time. I think the whole thing would glow blue at full power. It is not currently be used.
2. An explanation of the AC to DC convertor.
3. Steam engine.
4. World War II bomber flow by New Zealand pilots who volunteered to fight in the war.
5. This is a sea plan used to fly passages to and from New Zealand before there where enough airports between England and New Zealand.
6. A good picture showing all the different planes in the museum.
7. A sail boat used by the Polynesia.Read more
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New Zealand Traveler
Auckland Parks
January 11, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C
Auckland has several great parks. The first two pictures are from a rose garden that is almost as good as the one in Portland. The third picture is very popular tree where most of the branches grow horizontal. It was really nice walking around in the parks.Read more
TravelerThe sixth picture reminds me that I should visit the Zilker Japanese Gardens more often.
1/12/25Reply
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New Zealand Traveler
Auckland
January 11, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C
The rest of these photos are ones I took when walking around Auckland. The first picture is the Sky Tower which marks the location of the casino. You can rappel from the Sky Tower for a fee but you would have to pay me to do that. There are a ton of boat in the docks and very few boats actually being used. The last picture shows an indoor boat garage for even more boats that are not being used. I saw at least two different boat garages.Read more
TravelerWaipapa Taumata Rau!
1/12/25ReplyTranslate
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New Zealand Traveler
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Sea Life Aquarium
January 11, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C
Walked to the Sea Life Aquarium which had a great Penguin encloser.
Traveler He looks like a perfectly toasted marshmallow with wings.
1/12/25Reply
TravelerNow that you finally accomplished your task to FindPenguins, is your journey over?
1/12/25Reply
TravelerI am sure there are more Penguins that need to be found.
1/12/25Reply
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New Zealand Traveler
Waitomo Caves Glow Worms
January 13, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ☁️ 15 °C
There an insect larva that hangs from the ceiling of caves. Its tail glows and it has these spider web like filaments hanging below it. Insects are attracted to the light from the glowing tail then get caught in the filaments and eaten.Read more
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New Zealand Traveler
Hobbiton Movie Set
January 14, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ☁️ 25 °C
Really well done Hobbiton tour. When they made the Hobbit movie they built this set to last and to turn it into a tourist attraction.
1 Hey its me!
2 Bilbo's home, it only goes in about ten feet inside. They built the inside on a movie set.
3 The tree over Bilbo's home which is made of metal
The rest of the pictures are from around the movie set. The tour explained how the movie was filmed. Some of the doors are human size and some are hobbit sized. So when they where filming hobbits they put the actors in from the human size doors. When they where filming humans they would put the actors in front of hobbit size doors.Read more
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New Zealand Traveler
Hobbiton Movie Set
January 14, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ☁️ 25 °C
They built a hobbit home, and sized everything to scale, that you get to walk thru. In the picture with the fire place, some kid jumped into my picture in front of the doorway, so you can get a sense of scale. It was impressive to see. They said that for the parts of the movie inside Bilbo's home, they had two identical movie sets except one was hobbit size and one was human size. So they would film Bilbo in the human size set and everyone else in the hobbit size set.Read more
The set design was amazing. [Mark]
1/23/25Reply
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New Zealand Traveler
Hobbiton Movie Set
January 14, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ☁️ 25 °C
The tour ended at the Green Dragon Inn which included one free drink. So well done.
I have to get a sign like that for my bar! [Mark]
1/23/25Reply
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New Zealand Traveler
Most of New Zealand North Island
January 15, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ☁️ 23 °C
From what I have seen, most of the North Island of New Zealand is this farm county look.
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New Zealand Traveler
Rotorua
January 15, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ☁️ 22 °C
I headed down to Rotorua and picked a hotel on the lake, which I thought would be nice. I noticed there was a point of interest close to the hotel called "Sulfur Point" and thought it would be great to walk to it. When I arrived there was a very strong odor of Sulfur in the air and the lake did not look so great. The area has several hot water springs and this one has a lot of sulfur in the spring water.Read more
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New Zealand Traveler
Redwoods in Rotorua
January 20, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ☁️ 21 °C
Around 1901 New Zealand cleared an area of native trees and planted trees from all over the world to see what trees would grow best in New Zealand for lumber production. Apparently the California Pine won, the guild said it takes 100 years before they harvest the California Pine in California but takes only 25 years in New Zealand. They also planted California Redwood trees and after World War II they dedicated the Redwood Trees they planted to soldiers that died in the war and made the area a national park. I was shocked to see a Redwood Tree forest in New Zealand that was just like the ones in California just a lot smaller area.

1 Redwood trees.
2 On the right are Redwood Trees and the on the left are native trees.
3 What the native forest looks like, the trees are not very straight.
4 A hiking trail thru the native forestRead more
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New Zealand Traveler
Rotorua
January 21, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ☁️ 17 °C
I changed hotels to a different part of the lake which was much better as shown in the first picture. The next two pictures are of a different hot spring.
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New Zealand Traveler
Mount Eden
January 30, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ⛅ 23 °C
Climbed up another extinct volcano in Auckland. The last picture was taken from my hotel widow.
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New Zealand Traveler
Rangitoto Island
February 2, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C
This is an extinct volcano but is the most recent volcano in Auckland to have an eruption, which was about 600 years ago. The hiking path up to the top was on top of the last lava flow from the volcano and there was a lava tunnel you could walk thru.Read more
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New Zealand Traveler
Tauranga
February 4, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C
The cruise ship boarding was delayed for two hours for some unknow reason. After I finished checking in and they gave me by room key and was about one minute from boarding the ship, a staff member goes by the way here is a letter from the captain. The letter stated that the previous cruise had an out break of passengers coming down with a stomach bug and I could cancel my cruise for a full refund if I wanted to. Talk about waiting until the last minute to tell me about it. I talked to one of the staff members and he felt that about ten percent of the passengers came down with the stomach bug. On this cruise I have never seen such large efforts to keep passengers from getting sick. At the buffet a staff member has to service you and if you want ketchup, you have to have a staff member squeeze it out of a bottle onto you plate.Read more
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New Zealand Traveler
Napier
February 5, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ☁️ 21 °C
Napier had a really nice botanical garden and I pretty much had the whole place to myself.
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New Zealand Traveler
Picton
February 6, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ⛅ 22 °C
Most of the ports seem to have large stacks of timber ready to load onto bulk carriers.
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New Zealand Traveler
Christchurch
February 8, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ☁️ 19 °C
Went on a tour of the International Antarctic Centre. Across the street is the USA Antarctic building, soon to be cut by Trump I am sure. They took us on a off road ride in the all terrain vehicle shown in the second picture. Near by was the New Zealand air force museum. It was all interesting stuff.Read more
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New Zealand Traveler
Milford Sound
February 10, 2025 in New Zealand ⋅ ☁️ 13 °C
One of the best sights I saw in New Zealand and you can drive here. At the top of the mountain in one of the pictures, if you zoom way in, you can see Gandalf Bilbo waving down at the cruise ship.
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Trip end
February 11, 2025