After we returned from our fantastic trip to White Island, we checked into the comfortable 
Tourist Court Motel in Whakatane. This was the first motel 
that we had stayed in during our travel and it was wonderful. The room was large, we had a kitchen and the staff was friendly. It was perfect after so many days on the road and so many hostels. We went into town for a while, but discovered that the downtown closed up around 5PM which was disappointing.
The next day, we packed up our bags, bid farewell to the friendly owners and headed west along the Pacific Coast Highway which hugs the coast along the Bay of Plenty. We were driving through kiwi land including Te Puka, the self proclaimed kiwi capital of the world. We therefore had to stop off at Kiwi 360, an unabashed kiwi experience which offers tours of kiwi orchids, helicopter rides over said orchids, a giant kiwi out front that can be climbed and of course, a gift shop full of unique, kiwi derived merchandise such as kiwi wines, clothes and the Golden Kiwi. The Golden Kiwi is similar to the normal, green kiwi, but has a yellow interior and a smooth skin without the fur of its green cousin and has pointed ends. The Golden
Kiwi is the product of plant breeding and was introduced to the US in 1999 from New Zealand. The kiwi itself was introduced to New Zealand in 1904 when a school teacher planted the first “Chinese Gooseberry”. The fruit flourished and is now one of the country’s major exports.
We didn’t take any of the tours at Kiwi 360, but we did wander over the kiwi vineyard next to the parking lot to take photos of the fruits on the vines. Kiwis are delicate fruits and therefore are grown between tall trees that serve as break winds. The break winds make it impossible to see the kiwis from the highway and so the vineyard was the only chance that we got to catch a glimpse of the fruits during our whole trip.
We continued on and after driving on one lane highways for most of our trip, we got onto a real highway about 50km south of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. Approximately one million people, or a quarter of the population of New Zealand lives in the city of Auckland. The city is the world’s largest Polynesian city with twenty percent of the population either claiming Maori descent or decent from migrants who arrived from the Pacific islands. Geographically, the sprawl of the city straddles a thin strip of land between the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea and it is only a few kilometer walk to get from the harbor on one side to the harbor on the other. To the east lies the Haitemeta Harbor which is the city’s deep harbor port which fills with sailboats during the summer, earning the city the name “City of Sails”. Auckland was host to the Americas Cup over the summers of 1999-2000 and 2002-2003. Looking out into the harbor, one can see islands and extinct volcanoes rising from the water. The city was built amongst fifty extinct volcanic cones and is dotted with parks and green areas, often around the volcanic cones.
Our hostel was conveniently located about a fifteen minute walk from downtown and in the trendy Ponsbony neighborhood which is regarded as being on the cutting edge of Auckland’s food scene. There were restaurants featuring foods from all over Polynesia and beyond. One night Sue and I tried a Malaysian restaurant which was really good and hopefully a good sample of what we will be having next January. Also nearby was Karangahape Road (K’ Road) which is both praised by urban planners due to its shopping renaissance and maligned by opponents to its seedier parts.
Once we checked in, we headed downtown to see the sights. Dominating the skyline of the city center is the concrete Skytower which was built in the 1990’s and is currently New Zealand’s tallest structure at 328 meters in height. There are of course skywalks where one can look out through the windows to get great views of the surrounding city. Part of the fun is that sections of the floor in the observation tower are made of glass. Signs assure the visitors that the glass is thick and therefore as strong as concrete, but it truly is a bit nerving to be standing on glass and watching people scurrying about far below you. Since this is New Zealand, the tower of course offers chances for adventure experiences. There is the Skyjump where “daredevils who love life” can pay to jump off of the tower for a mere $195. The jump is a base jump by wire and the speed of the jump is controlled at 75 km per hour. Guide wires prevent the jumper from being blown about the building and the jumper is slowed to a gentle stop to land on a tower at the base of the Skytower. If a jumper runs back up the tower without taking off their jumpsuit, the next jump is only $75. There is also an adventure called Vertigo Climb where people pay $95 to climb up through the narrow spire of the TV tower to reach a small platform that is at 270m. It sounds tame, but the climber must wear helmets, overalls and a body harness and must pass a test in a simulator before being allowed to climb.
On the morning of Sunday, January 28 we took the last of our bags out of our rental car to get it ready to be returned that morning. However, first we drove the car to a nearby church for services. I was driving and was already stressed about what we would be charged for the dings in the windshield which may have been why I misjudged a curb while parking, destroying one of our plastic hubcaps. Fantastic. After church, we went to the Domain, an area of semi-formal gardens arranged over the profile of an extinct volcano. The Domain was set aside as the city’s first park in 1840’s and a volcanic spring in the park was the city’s first water supply. The park is also home to the Auckland Museum which was originally built as a World War I monument and today holds one of the world’s finest collections of Maori and Pacific art.
After some time in the park, it was time to face the music when we returned to car to the rental agency. Renting the car had worked out beautifully because we could both fly out of Auckland, leaving the car behind. Otherwise, if it had been my car, I would have been looking at a very long drive as well as a ferry crossing in order to get it home. Now, we just had to see how much the damage would cost. At the counter, I explained that I had just shattered the hubcap and that it was in the trunk. The agent left us inside the office as he went out to check on the car. You have no idea how much of a relief it was when he came back in and told us that everything looked fine and that if we were billed for the hubcap, it would only be a $10 charge and that it was most likely that we would not be billed. After we left the office, I had to sit down for a minute after all of the stress that we would be charged hundreds of dollars for the windshield.
After lunch in a park, we took a ferry across Auckland harbor to Devonport, one of Auckand’s oldest suburbs. A naval station was one of Devonport’s earliest residents, followed by wealthy merchants who built fine villas along the quiet streets. The streets of the downtown area are lined with restaurants, cafes, galleries and stores for knickknacks. After wandering about, we climbed up Mt. Victoria which is one of two ancient volcanoes in the area to get views of the harbor and the city. It was a nice way to spend our last afternoon.
Once back at the backpackers we went out to dinner and then started the task of packing. Sue flew out the next morning back to Boston via Honolulu and I flew back to Christchurch. We had jammed a lot into our three weeks of touring about New Zealand. From fjords to glaciers to walking inside active volcanoes to kayaking to tramping on beaches, it seemed more like ten months than only three weeks. Thank you to Sue for being my first visitor in New Zealand. She was a saint for putting up with me for that long, for not letting me ditch the rental car and for putting up with some bad music and “eat your weight in yogurt” days (it was far cheaper to buy a big container of yogurt than two small ones which meant that we either finished the container before we left in the morning or threw it in the bin. Not being ones to waste food, we at a lot of yogurt).
Tourist Court Motel in Whakatane. This was the first motel 
that we had stayed in during our travel and it was wonderful. The room was large, we had a kitchen and the staff was friendly. It was perfect after so many days on the road and so many hostels. We went into town for a while, but discovered that the downtown closed up around 5PM which was disappointing.The next day, we packed up our bags, bid farewell to the friendly owners and headed west along the Pacific Coast Highway which hugs the coast along the Bay of Plenty. We were driving through kiwi land including Te Puka, the self proclaimed kiwi capital of the world. We therefore had to stop off at Kiwi 360, an unabashed kiwi experience which offers tours of kiwi orchids, helicopter rides over said orchids, a giant kiwi out front that can be climbed and of course, a gift shop full of unique, kiwi derived merchandise such as kiwi wines, clothes and the Golden Kiwi. The Golden Kiwi is similar to the normal, green kiwi, but has a yellow interior and a smooth skin without the fur of its green cousin and has pointed ends. The Golden
Kiwi is the product of plant breeding and was introduced to the US in 1999 from New Zealand. The kiwi itself was introduced to New Zealand in 1904 when a school teacher planted the first “Chinese Gooseberry”. The fruit flourished and is now one of the country’s major exports.We didn’t take any of the tours at Kiwi 360, but we did wander over the kiwi vineyard next to the parking lot to take photos of the fruits on the vines. Kiwis are delicate fruits and therefore are grown between tall trees that serve as break winds. The break winds make it impossible to see the kiwis from the highway and so the vineyard was the only chance that we got to catch a glimpse of the fruits during our whole trip.
We continued on and after driving on one lane highways for most of our trip, we got onto a real highway about 50km south of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. Approximately one million people, or a quarter of the population of New Zealand lives in the city of Auckland. The city is the world’s largest Polynesian city with twenty percent of the population either claiming Maori descent or decent from migrants who arrived from the Pacific islands. Geographically, the sprawl of the city straddles a thin strip of land between the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea and it is only a few kilometer walk to get from the harbor on one side to the harbor on the other. To the east lies the Haitemeta Harbor which is the city’s deep harbor port which fills with sailboats during the summer, earning the city the name “City of Sails”. Auckland was host to the Americas Cup over the summers of 1999-2000 and 2002-2003. Looking out into the harbor, one can see islands and extinct volcanoes rising from the water. The city was built amongst fifty extinct volcanic cones and is dotted with parks and green areas, often around the volcanic cones.
The highway we were driving on took us within a kilometer of our hostel and after some planning using my GPS, we were able to pull up in front of the Verandahs where we would be spending the last nights of our trip. Sue had found this hostel online and it was really nice and the owner was friendly. He asked us what we did and after I told him that I am studying for my PhD in building acoustics, he told me about a problem that he is having with the noise of a nearby bar. In addition to the hostel, he owns two other buildings which he would like to
make into more rooms and his residence, but a nearby bar makes a terrible racket at night. He inquired about different windows that he could use and how to give his walls a better transmission loss. Sue and I unfortunately, got to hear the noise that night. The sound system of the bar sounded as if it was in our room in the wee hours of the morning which was horrible.
make into more rooms and his residence, but a nearby bar makes a terrible racket at night. He inquired about different windows that he could use and how to give his walls a better transmission loss. Sue and I unfortunately, got to hear the noise that night. The sound system of the bar sounded as if it was in our room in the wee hours of the morning which was horrible.Our hostel was conveniently located about a fifteen minute walk from downtown and in the trendy Ponsbony neighborhood which is regarded as being on the cutting edge of Auckland’s food scene. There were restaurants featuring foods from all over Polynesia and beyond. One night Sue and I tried a Malaysian restaurant which was really good and hopefully a good sample of what we will be having next January. Also nearby was Karangahape Road (K’ Road) which is both praised by urban planners due to its shopping renaissance and maligned by opponents to its seedier parts.
Once we checked in, we headed downtown to see the sights. Dominating the skyline of the city center is the concrete Skytower which was built in the 1990’s and is currently New Zealand’s tallest structure at 328 meters in height. There are of course skywalks where one can look out through the windows to get great views of the surrounding city. Part of the fun is that sections of the floor in the observation tower are made of glass. Signs assure the visitors that the glass is thick and therefore as strong as concrete, but it truly is a bit nerving to be standing on glass and watching people scurrying about far below you. Since this is New Zealand, the tower of course offers chances for adventure experiences. There is the Skyjump where “daredevils who love life” can pay to jump off of the tower for a mere $195. The jump is a base jump by wire and the speed of the jump is controlled at 75 km per hour. Guide wires prevent the jumper from being blown about the building and the jumper is slowed to a gentle stop to land on a tower at the base of the Skytower. If a jumper runs back up the tower without taking off their jumpsuit, the next jump is only $75. There is also an adventure called Vertigo Climb where people pay $95 to climb up through the narrow spire of the TV tower to reach a small platform that is at 270m. It sounds tame, but the climber must wear helmets, overalls and a body harness and must pass a test in a simulator before being allowed to climb.
On the morning of Sunday, January 28 we took the last of our bags out of our rental car to get it ready to be returned that morning. However, first we drove the car to a nearby church for services. I was driving and was already stressed about what we would be charged for the dings in the windshield which may have been why I misjudged a curb while parking, destroying one of our plastic hubcaps. Fantastic. After church, we went to the Domain, an area of semi-formal gardens arranged over the profile of an extinct volcano. The Domain was set aside as the city’s first park in 1840’s and a volcanic spring in the park was the city’s first water supply. The park is also home to the Auckland Museum which was originally built as a World War I monument and today holds one of the world’s finest collections of Maori and Pacific art.After some time in the park, it was time to face the music when we returned to car to the rental agency. Renting the car had worked out beautifully because we could both fly out of Auckland, leaving the car behind. Otherwise, if it had been my car, I would have been looking at a very long drive as well as a ferry crossing in order to get it home. Now, we just had to see how much the damage would cost. At the counter, I explained that I had just shattered the hubcap and that it was in the trunk. The agent left us inside the office as he went out to check on the car. You have no idea how much of a relief it was when he came back in and told us that everything looked fine and that if we were billed for the hubcap, it would only be a $10 charge and that it was most likely that we would not be billed. After we left the office, I had to sit down for a minute after all of the stress that we would be charged hundreds of dollars for the windshield.
After lunch in a park, we took a ferry across Auckland harbor to Devonport, one of Auckand’s oldest suburbs. A naval station was one of Devonport’s earliest residents, followed by wealthy merchants who built fine villas along the quiet streets. The streets of the downtown area are lined with restaurants, cafes, galleries and stores for knickknacks. After wandering about, we climbed up Mt. Victoria which is one of two ancient volcanoes in the area to get views of the harbor and the city. It was a nice way to spend our last afternoon.
Once back at the backpackers we went out to dinner and then started the task of packing. Sue flew out the next morning back to Boston via Honolulu and I flew back to Christchurch. We had jammed a lot into our three weeks of touring about New Zealand. From fjords to glaciers to walking inside active volcanoes to kayaking to tramping on beaches, it seemed more like ten months than only three weeks. Thank you to Sue for being my first visitor in New Zealand. She was a saint for putting up with me for that long, for not letting me ditch the rental car and for putting up with some bad music and “eat your weight in yogurt” days (it was far cheaper to buy a big container of yogurt than two small ones which meant that we either finished the container before we left in the morning or threw it in the bin. Not being ones to waste food, we at a lot of yogurt).
1 comment:
I just stumbled upon this post, very nice! We are planning a trip this summer and want to visit Auckland. Your pictures are incredible and I can't wait to go!
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