Advertisement
Published: March 7th 2017
Edit Blog Post
Days 137 to 141 of 165 days
The Bay of Islands continues to delight with some of the best weather we have had whilst on North Island.
But, we also need to start to get into leaving NZ mode by divesting ourselves of some of the accumulated odds n sods we have picked up on our trip and stuff that wasn't needed for the remainder of our trip onwards to Hawaii and Vancouver. So we packed the largest NZ Post box available - all our hiking gear, cooking kit, sleeping bags, poles, souvenirs, stuff for Simon, ..... - and were somewhat surprised when the parcel weighed in at over 9kg at the post office! Oh well, at least it's not in our hand luggage.
Then we took ourselves back across the bay to Russell intending just to rest, read and relax. Whilst there though we visited a couple of places we hadn't when there a couple of days earlier and before we knew it we had used most of the day in those.
The wooden Christ Church is NZ's oldest, built in 1836 whilst Russell was still in 'hell hole' mode
referred to in the last blog . Following Maori dissatisfaction with the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi there was conflict between them and the English. In 1845 HMS Hazard lost her commanding officer and 6 seamen , an unknown number of Maori were slain. There is a large memorial to the HMS Hazard men which is still kept pristine by the Royal Navy. The is also a memorial to '...pioneer residents, Maori and Pakhea....' who died. The church took musket fire, holes from which can still be seen on the outside planks.
Then Pompallier Mission and Printery, NZ's oldest surviving industrial, Roman Catholic and rammed earth building - see what the Tourist Board did there, a '3 for the price of 1' whammy. Carefully restored they have reinstated it as per its original purpose which was the printing of books in the 1840s - 40,000 of them - in the Maori language. Our guide took us carefully and thoroughly through the process, and in doing so we learnt the origins of several words and phrases we now use outside of printing, including skiving, making a good impression, coining the phrase, knocking into shape, cut to the chase and
dab hand, but we'll spare you the additional 2-300 words required to explain each of these.
It was an early start and a steady drive to Auckland. Pip has got a proper handle on the dual new driving for her - NZ roads and an automatic gearbox. (In fact after we took the car back yesterday she professed to actually preferring the automatic). So early did we arrive in Auckland that we had a pretty full day in town before checking in to our hostel, in an area where house prices average $2m.
Whilst in NZ we have used Countdown as our supermarket of choice, which we would generally describe as not quite as good as Tesco. But near the hostel, in Ponsonby, was a Countdown in a whole different league. Countdown crossed with best of Waitrose via Harrods' Food Hall. In addition to mentioning the designer ice cream on the way in, and the made to order sushi counter just inside we present to you a snapshot from the wine section - Penfolds vintage wines ranging up to 1976 at $2799.99 per bottle, that's around £1570! Don't think they have those in our
local Tesco.
Having taken 4 'free' walking tours already in NZ we went along on Auckland's offering. And despite Auckland having done a pretty thorough job of demolishing most of its heritage buildings for the sake of high rise office blocks the guide did a good job of taking 3 hours of our group's time showing us around and putting some important aspects of NZ history into perspective.
We then took ourselves off on the ferry across to Devonport. Yes, Devonport, named by the sailors in the 1840s when England opened a naval base there. And the naval base is still there, now for the Royal NZ navy, and like Devonport, Plymouth, they have a Babcocks engineering maintenance base there too!
Yesterday we went to the Auckland War Memorial and Museum, a combined unit originally built in the 1920s and extended in the 1960s. One impression we are coming away from NZ with is that they have some pretty damm fine museums and, by default, must have some extremely able museum exhibit designers. Yet again, even with 6 intense hours there, we could have easily doubled our time and still not
thoroughly see everything. Particularly noteworthy was their 'Volcanoes' section. Auckland is built amongst a volcano field, 57 cones in total. And they are not even totally classed as 'inactive'. One of them blew around 600 years ago, which in geological terms is recent, so it is categorised as dormant not inactive, a big difference. In the Volcanoes section you can sit in a mock living room with a view out to sea. There is a news broadcast about an impending eruption during which the room shakes, violently, and the sea starts to bubble. The volcano then emerges, blows and the room is obliterated by the pyroclastic cloud!
We topped off our day, our penultimate in NZ, with a blow out meal at The Sugar Club, 53 floors up the Auckland Skytower. This booking also gave us free access to the tower's viewing platforms on levels 51 and 60, with great views over the city, harbour and those pesky volcanic cones. And views straight down to ground, 621 feet below, through the 35mm thick glass panels set at intervals into the floor. The label saying 'these panels are as strong as the concrete floor' doesn't totally inspire confidence
when you spot the target rings at ground level (though, for full disclosure, they are at the base of the Skyjump, a thrill ride whereby people launch themselves from floor 53 in a wire controlled plummet to ground). Adam......you were very brave!
The Sugar Club, by chef Peter Gordon, had 2 incarnations in London in the 1990s, but we had missed it there. Our loss. PG was / is famed for introducing high class gastronomy to the concept of fusion food - combining Asian flavours and techniques into western cooking. And at this level, in a meaning in more ways than one, it was fabulous.
Today, last day in NZ but our flight isn't until 9pm so plenty of time to spend back in the city. After a look around the fish market - wish we had come on an earlier day and shopped - we gave the National Maritime Museum a visit. 2 hours they suggest - have they actually tried going around their own museum? See comment above about NZ museums. So many interesting sections and exhibits. Special mention to their extensive section on NZ's Americas Cup campaigns, and their winning /
retention of same under the leadership of Sir Peter Blake, including 2 of the boats from those campaigns - bloody enormous brutes the NZ boats for those campaigns were too, though initially beaten by the nimble USA catamaran.
Off to the airport and away we fly on our overnight trip. Pleased to see that our planning, and posting, is still working. Paul's carry-on weighs in at 6.3kg, Pip's 5.2kg! We do a Phileas Fogg on this trip, arriving before we left. It was 20:55 on Tuesday 7 March when we left. When we arrive in Hawaii it will be 06:30 but still on Tuesday 7 March.
Our blog headings should be '...of 166 days', not 165.
Written, mostly, in the body of a Boeing B787-9 wide bodied jet, at 560mph, on our way to Hawaii. And, due to turbulence, we have just risen from around 38000 feet to 41000 feet above the Pacific. And the tracking line on the flight screen in front is looking wiggly as the pilot appears to be trying to steer around it.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.054s; Tpl: 0.022s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0222s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb