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You’d think it would be easy to find a Kiwi in Auckland, wouldn’t you? No, not the kind that we saw yesterday or any old NZ citizen, but the national bird. We’re talking the real thing here and it turns out that it isn’t as easy as you’d think. But, more on that later.
We woke up thinking it was Super Bowl Sunday, but then, after thinking about it rationally in our time warp existence, realized that on this side of the world the Super Bowl will be played on Monday about noon local time. Since that is tomorrow it was time to relax! So, rather than worry about where to watch the Super Bowl, we got our minds around leaving the ship and finding our hotel in downtown Auckland.
Click here for the detailed Auckland Day 1 Photo Gallery.
This morning was a typical disembarkation day, up early and off the ship by 9:00 am. Dale got up very early and went out to shoot pictures of our arrival. After breakfast at the Terrace Cafe we went downstairs and waited for our tag color to be called. And, it was as smooth a disembarkation as we’ve ever experienced…partially due to the fact that we had cleared New Zealand immigration on the ship a couple days ago.
We were “Independents”, so we made our way to the taxi line and ten minutes later we were at our downtown Auckland Hotel, the SkyCity Grand. As a side note, everything we booked through Oceania cost SIGNIFICANTLY more than doing “independent” bookings. The transfer to our hotel through Oceania was $180 per person. We paid $20 NZ…which is about $18 U.S. – for both of us. It was less than a 5 minute cab ride.
We checked in and found our room wasn’t ready…which made sense, as it was just 9:30 am. So we checked our bags and took a Hop On/Hop Off Double-Decker bus tour of the city. It worked out well and we were able to get a good overview plus we could choose where to spend our time. The city of Auckland is New Zealand’s largest city in population and area-wise, one of the biggest in the world. The city is built around more than 50 volcanoes, either extinct or dormant, and the whole area is surrounded by water.
We chose to “hop off” first at Mount Eden, which is the highest natural point in Auckland. It is a dormant volcano and we were able to hike up to the bowl-like 150 foot crater. There was a great panoramic view of Auckland and we were lucky that the weather was OK. Some high, fluffy clouds but no rain!
I had told Dale that I wanted to see a Kiwi bird (seeing how we saw the Kiwi fruit already) and we had a chance on our tour to “hop off” at the Auckland Zoo. We found our way to the nocturnal building where we were told the Kiwis were located. We didn’t realize that the Kiwi is nocturnal so the zoo keeps the area artificially dark during the day (when there are visitors at the zoo) and artificially light during the night. That way the Kiwis are up and active during zoo hours.
The Kiwi is an endangered flightless bird. It is not only the national bird but also the national symbol of New Zealand – so much so that residents of New Zealand are referred to as “Kiwi”. We can assume they align with the bird and not the fruit! It took a while for our eyes to adjust, but after five minutes or so, we still didn’t see anything. I was very disappointed…this was the whole reason we were here and there we were, in a room so dark everyone was bumping into each other and my hopes to see a Kiwi were quickly fading. After another five minutes or so we heard some excited voices about twenty feet away. We made our way over and sure enough there were two Kiwi birds moving around in the bushes behind the glass. Dale managed to get a picture of one by turning his camera’s ISO setting up very high.
They were a lot larger than we expected. They were about the size of a chicken, with a long, skinny beak and no tail. Dale was able to get some blurry photos and we watched them for 5 minutes or so. I was very happy! After my expectations were fulfilled we continued on to see the rest of the zoo. It was a nice, smallish city zoo built in 1922 and they had a good variety of animals. We saw some lions, a pair of spectacular Sumatran tigers and a red panda (nothing like the regular pandas, more like a red fox). We saw giraffes (mom and baby), rhinoceros and even a pair of hippopotamuses, although they mostly stayed underwater and we just saw their eyes and noses.
Back on the bus, we finished our city tour and I got off to go back to the hotel to check-in and Dale went down to spend a couple hours at Viaduct Harbor to check out the America’s Cup history and get a panoramic photo of the Regatta cruise ship in port.
Later, we had a very nice sushi dinner in a local restaurant and went back to the hotel early. Tomorrow is Super Bowl Monday! We are meeting with Gary and Dawn (friends we met on the Regatta) to watch the game in a local pub. Dale is rooting for the Giants and I’m for the Patriots — I grew up in New England after all — go Patriots!
Photography Comments:
Today I had a very busy day. First, we had to disembark. I took some along time early in the day to film our entrance into the harbor which, at first looked pretty bleak due to the overcast weather. But, I got some interesting shots of the dock area as we pulled in and, at the same time, actually enjoyed seeing it for the first time in person. Can’t say I got anything exciting getting off the ship but I did take a couple shots to document that we got off the ship. Also got a fun shot of our new friends Gary and Dawn and were sad to say goodbye to them. We had some good times. After dumping the bags off we had a beautiful day on the bus and I got some nice panoramas. It was a breath of fresh air actually seeing blue skies and puffy white clouds. Spectacular! After checking into the hotel I had a nice time shooting while walking around the dock area where I wanted to get a pano of the Regatta (which I did). I had high hopes for some other shots that just didn’t work out but I did get some nice ones of the tower and some buildings here and there. By the end of the day we were back to white out sky and I had to wait another day for some more opportunities. Auckland is beautiful city and one that has many photo opportunities if you have more time.
Trip Summary » Travel with Dale & Margaret - […] Auckland, New Zealand […]