Tuesday 23rd January – Friday 26th January 2018
By 9.30 am we were already on the road after having spent 3 days in Rotorua. We had hiked in volcanic and geothermal grounds, gone ziplining in NZ’s only indigenous forest with trees over 500 years old and all the time the smell of sulfur; sometimes so strong that it was quite nauseating!
This was going to be a short drive to Auckland, however we did a detour to Matamata – a small country town which became famous due to Peter Jackson’s filming of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and changing this town into Hobbiton! Of course I felt it my duty to stop here as Martijn (my son) and I had read all the books and seen all the films. The i-Site building is a replica of the Hobbiton gatehouse and inside we found a statue of Gollem – my precious!
We continued our drive to Auckland and we were first going to meet up with my cousins Mark and Philip Abela – their mum and I are first cousins as both our dads were siblings. While I knew of their existence, I had never met my Kiwi cousins. Anyway over coffee we got to know each other and especially Mark does travel to Europe as he loves hiking so we are sure to meet up again. Then onto Parnell to visit with my old school friend, Anisia – this is where we were going to use as a base for our sightseeing in and round about Auckland. Interesting note is that I haven’t seen Anisia since I left school many decades ago and although we are friends on Facebook, when we met it was just like old times and we had just met yesterday !!
After a good night’s rest at Anisia’s home and having brought ourselves up to date with what’s been keeping us busy all these decades, it was time to do the sights. Parnell is a very central area of Auckland and in fact is stuck to downtown Auckland and just because this is the last place we are visiting in New Zealand, we were granted some really good weather. We woke up to bright sunshine and it was time to go and explore!
We drove down Tamaki Drive offering us beautiful sights of the coastline and our next stop was to have lunch at one of the many seaside restaurants at Mission Bay. Oh it was so great sitting outdoors and watching the world go by. Everyone here seems to be in a holiday mood – well kids are still off from school for their summer holidays and there were a great number of mums with their kids going down to the beach.
Lunch over, we made our way back to town to visit the National and War Museum. Again we were lucky to view quite a number of interesting exhibitions of the Maori culture as well as the Great War of 1914-18 where more than 100.000 men left for the war and only 40.000 came back.
This was a really busy day, as in the evening, Anisia and Owen invited us to the Sky City – Auckland’s 328 meter high tower and the tallest in the southern hemisphere . We rocketed up to the observation deck and we had enough time to take inn the views before going up another storey for our dinner on a rotating restaurant. After dinner we drove down to the Wynyard Quarter full of waterfront restaurants and beautiful boats berthed – to be fully inspected the following morning!
The following morning we woke up to another day of bright sunshine and our itinerary for the day was to explore Wynyard Quarter and then take a ferry trip to Waiheke Island. As we could not get any tickets on the ferry to take our car with us, we decided to go on public transport all the way. Of course, we had to investigate everything on Internet and got a good feeling that we could take public means of transport – which was a first for Gerry!! Walked up to the top of the road to catch the bus to get as close to the Wynyard quarter and everyone was helpful when we asked our way around. The bus drivers are ever so pleasant!! And it was great catching the bus and seeing the sights along the road without watching out for traffic.
By the time we got to Wynyard Quarters and having walked around, it was time to have lunch. Our stroll was quite fascinating – beautiful views of the financial city with contrasts to the older buildings still standing such as the Ferry House and the Customs house and the Viaduct Harbour. The latter was once a commercial port but since Auckland has been hosting the America Cup sailing competition, this are has been given a great makeover and there loads of eating places facing the little harbour now full of very expensive yachts. This is where we had our lunch – at an Irish pub called O’Hagan’s Irish Pub. We sat outside in the shade and enjoyed a green salad and some potato wedges with sour cream and salsa.
Once our lunch was over, we finally decided to take the ferry across to Waiheke island. After a 45 minute crossing, we arrived at a totally different place – this island was covered with vineyards and had loads of winetasting houses. We bought a day ticket on the bus and travelled to a few of the villages scattered on the island but finally decided to stop at Onetangi Beach – the beach houses here – bachs – are mostly lavish weekend homes for millionnaires. Anyway had a swim and a lie down on the sandy beach and just enjoyed our surroundings. We could sense that this place was a millionaires’ hiding place as when we stopped for a drink at the Boathouse, there were quite a few jetsetty crowds drinking bubbly wine and wearing stylish beach clothes……… Well after our drinks (bubbles yes, but not alcoholic……. Ginger beer!!), we caught the bus back to the harbour to get our ferry back to Auckland. A great afternoon!!
And then it was Friday morning – a leisure morning spent with Anisia at her house just chatting over coffee before we started packing our gear – we had an early flight following morning to Adelaide Australia which meant our Kiwi adventure was over. But before that, we were invited to Rocky and Sarah’s place in Torbay for an early dinner. Rocky had spent quite some time at Gerry’s place in Holland when travelling in Europe some 25 years ago – he used Gerry’s house as a base and it seemed he had fond memories of those travelling days. Sarah is a real princess in the kitchen – we had a fantastic dinner starting off with snapper caught the previous day by Rocky when he went out fishing and then my favourite – roast lamb – there was also a wonderful desert, ginger trifle but that was just too much for me but Gerry finished off everything. What a wonderful way to end up our New Zealand trip!
