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During our sea day between Napier and Auckland the weather deteriorated and there were warnings of severe weather. Cap'n Bob decided to get a clog on and beat the storm which was affecting the South Island of New Zealand. So we were tied up alongside in Auckland at 10pm, 12 hours earlier than expected. After dinner many of us ventured out to sample the night life of Auckland. Pretty much the same as anywhere on a Friday night - overrun with noisy teenagers, well fuelled with alcohol etc. queueing to get into the night clubs - the noise levels were unbelievable emanating from the disco and we feared for their eardrums!
A quick wander along the waterfront and up Queen St. enabled us to get our bearings for the day ahead. The heavens opened as we returned to the ship but the crew, many of the cabin stewards and waiters, were not deterred by it and headed off the ship looking forward to a night on the town.
Saturday morning brought sun and blue skies initially, but a fierce wind and squally showers made us rethink our plans. It has occurred to us that many of the cities we have visited are much the same - modern high rise buildings, expensive shopping malls, museums etc.
We would have taken the lift to the top of the Sky Tower to do the sky walk or maybe even base jumping off the platform at the top, but 3 things sprang to mind that meant we had to refuse this amazing opportunity. The wind speed was 40 - 50 mph, it cost $NZ 200 and I am just having to rack my brains for the third reason....... Oh yes, we hadn't got the b...s anyway!!
So dodging the showers we found Omega Car Hire on Beach Road and set off 20 minutes later, in a rather elderly Toyota Camry, for the Coromandel Peninsula. Thankfully, Ian had not told me until we were on the way back to Auckland that the car had 163k or so km on the clock, because as the navigator I would not have dared go so far from Auckland. Whilst the NZ AA is very good at producing tourist maps and literature, it isn't keen on adding a scale to some of their maps.
We headed south along HW1 and turned east towards the mountains and ultimately the coast. The journey was relatively uneventful, interspersed with the occasional torrential downpour and gale force winds as Cap'n Bob's poor weather settled in. Confirmed our view that today was not a day for walking around town, in any event it was good to get out to the countryside.
I forget the precise figure but there are something like 10x more sheep than people in New Zealand, and there is a heck of a lot of cattle too. The sheep are a pretty upper class bunch, not the scruffy, long matted hair variety you see in upland U.K, with suspicious brown stuff hanging off their rear ends. Here the sheep are shorter legged with tight, curled coats, much better groomed articles they are. The cattle, mainly beef rather than dairy, are grazed pretty intensively in small grass sections, especially on the low coastal flatlands. The roads are not congested by any stretch but the terrain is hilly and you cannot maintain high speeds.
There is plenty of evidence of the volcanic history of the area with conical hills aplenty. Away from the lowland the country is heavily wooded with the ramrod straight pines much in evidence. But giant ferns, almost to be mistaken for palm trees, also abound, an indication perhaps of a high rainfall, there certainly is today. A brief stop at an isolated roadside cafe produces good coffee and exceedingly good home baked cakes.
Then further east over the small chain of hills to the coast of the peninsula. We didn't have enough time to get to the Hot Water Beach where, if you dig down into the sand, hot water from the volcanic springs rises to the surface. A quick photo, postcard and rice cake stock up stop at a small town/village - Tairua and we retraced our steps part of the way back to Auckland.
We took a slight detour up the western side of the Firth of Thames where the road flanks the shoreline which is a haven for a variety of seabirds. The car hire company closes at 5pm on Saturdays, and in any case a vehicle of these advanced years ought not to be out after dark, as with it's occupants. So we aimed to be back by 4.45pm.
The city itself is built around a number of extinct volcanic cones which rise to 200+ m above the coastal plain. The largest of these is Mount Eden. You can climb to the top, it's very steep and we can assure you, very hard work, but the view from the top is well worth the effort even if the sweat in your eyes obscures the beautiful view slightly. There is also a road which aged Toyotas can negotiate, but the pedestrians and mountain bikers get in your way! How can we tell it's a volcano? Firstly the guide book said so and secondly the huge, now grassy crater, is a dead giveaway.
Dropped the car off at 5pm and headed back to Queen Street to spend our last $NZ28 on a couple of small plates of Malay chicken curry, some chocs for Emily, Jack, Sam and Toby and 2 coffees at Movenpick, who have the best wifi in the Southern Hemisphere - downloaded Saturday's Daily Telegraph in a flash; average coffee though.
Ross in Napier had told us about merino/opossum yarn which makes fantastic sweaters with excellent insulation properties. We did find a wool shop in Westfield Mall (yes they
Are here too) to check it out but at $NZ 20 per 50g ball it was out of the question; it would have put a sweater at about £150!
Back on board 6.45pm, dry now but very windy. Any other high spots of the day - oh yes, the beautiful little beagle, busy sniffing everyone's bags as they went ashore. She had a nose on her; she managed to sniff out 8 or so small single helping milk cartons from one passenger. Despite all the instructions, both written and verbal which the crew repeated many times, there are always some who choose to ignore them or try and beat them. New Zealand has even stricter food regulations than Australia. Have finally had to refuse the gluten free bread offering at dinner - having now run out of proper gf rolls and bread the chefs are valiantly trying to make rolls from the rice flour they have on board, bless 'em. They taste like soggy prawn crackers and apparently the Head Waiter tells us a few people are not too keen. Thank goodness for rice cakes. Daren't take one to dinner though, the waiting staff would feel that they had let us down; they are so sweet and take their jobs so seriously with regard to passenger satisfaction.
We enjoyed a great performance by a Maori group last night as they showed us some of their culture, plenty of audience participation in the tribal rituals, except by those old codgers who had fallen asleep on the front row, drawn attention to humorously by the Maori leader.
Well, tomorrow around 9am we cross the International Date Line and, so have 2 Sunday March 4ths to make us 12 hours behind you all in the UK. We shall enjoy our sea days, hoping the temperature starts to rise again soon, until the next port, Bora Bora where one of us is very much looking forward to some time on one of its idyllic beaches, described so well by James Michener in his book Tales of the South Pacific, which we have just discovered was the inspiration for the show and film South Pacific, not the island of Bali as we had thought! Yes, you guessed, Ian has already got his Speedos ready!!
As we write the ship is rolling a bit in a strong wind and the sea swell is 4 metres, but we'll man it and do our 12 laps of deck 7. Too wobbly for the treadmill today.
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