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Auckland, New Zealand

Sunday - March 2, 2008 - Auckland

Auckland is located between the Manukau Harbour on the Tasman Sea and Waitemata Harbour on the Pacific Ocean; making it one of the few cities in the world to have harbors on two separate major bodies of water. There are approx. 50 extinct volcanoes in the area; however the volcanic field itself is merely dormant, now what ever that means? The last know eruption was 700 years ago on the neighboring island of Motutapu.

Today we have to get off the ship and start the rest of our trip to Fiji. This should be most interesting. We had planned on a city tour from the ship so that we would be able to fill up some time and then go directly to the hotel. What a day this turned out to be, WOW. We picked up our luggage and headed for the buses, which there were two of. People were pushing and shoving. You would have thought the world was coming to an end; it was shameful the way people were acting. As it turned out we missed getting on the bus that we were suppose to be on because of some people that pushed there way in front of us. However we were then told to get on bus number two, but the driver didn’t want to deal with our luggage. Finally he was told to take care of it, which he did. Now this whole thing is even funnier yet, when we find out that the hotel was only one block from where the ship was and we could have walked ourselves over there in minutes. But that’s another story; anyway the bus pulls out and goes approximately one and half blocks to the harbor where we are told to get off, because we are going on a boat ride?

We didn’t even know about that part. And why didn’t they just have us walk over to the harbor rather then making that big bus drive us into an area where there really wasn’t any room for it? We still haven’t figured that one out, but OH we are off on a boat trip. Turns out it was a very nice sail boat and the day had turned somewhat nice, so it wasn’t cold and rainy. The sail around St. Herlier’s Bay as it was called within Auckland Harbor was a real treat as this too is a very pretty area. After the boat came back to the docks we were told we could spend a few moments in the Marine Museum, which we thought would be a great idea. But we didn’t have enough time to complete the tour of the museum, or at least we though so. We headed back to the bus to sit and wait for the rest of the group, who didn’t show up for almost a half hour. That made us late for our next stop. Oh God, what a day this has already been!

From there we are driven to The Kelly Tarlton’s Antarctic Village. This also turned out to be a very interesting trip and one that we really enjoyed. There was all types of fish and interesting animals to see, but the real high light was going into the Penguin area.

They had small busses made up to look like a Snow Cats. They took us into their cold, cold environment. There were several different kids of penguins, all swimming and walking around. Again, you could almost reach out and touch them. It was a great experience. From here we walked on to see the rest of the fish and into the shop. Well as it turns out, this time we were the ones that were a half hour late and everyone had to wait around for us, funny, how things change isn’t it?

Now we head up to the top of Mt. Eden for a 360 degrees view of the city of Auckland. As our bus chugs and puffs it’s way up to the top we all kind of wonder if it was going to make it, but it did. And surprise of surprises, there were cows up on top of this mountain, just having a jolly old time eating the grass!

We took some pictures and started back down to our hotel. Well guess what, we only make it about a half a mile down into the city and the poor bus just gives up the ghost and there we all sit waiting for another bus to come bail us out. Well of course it is Sunday and most of them are either off for the day or running other customers all over the place. I believe it took about an hour or so before the replacement bus showed up to take us back to the hotel. Then of course we had to drop people off all over the city and we were the last three on the bus for our hotel, which of course was only one block from the ship!

This was a very, very long day, so we immediately headed for the bar and then our rooms, which were very nice. After that, we caught up with most everyone else and went to watch the Mercury take off for the next part of it venture across the Pacific Ocean and into Alaska for the up coming summer months.

What a trip those people are going to have. Tomorrow we head for Fiji.