February 12, 2011
It was a dark and stormy night. But that was not the plan. We just arrived at our Rotorua hotel. The plan was to drive from Auckland on the scenic route but things always seem to take longer than expected. Believe it or not (I have proof in case you do not believe it) we ran into a couple from Mirasol in the Auckland Museum.
The Millers and the Hellers with our guide.
They have been traveling around New Zealand and are picking up a cruise here (there) tomorrow (today). What day is it anyway? I bought internet in our present hotel (hotel?) but it won’t work because they have an invalid security certificate and nobody here know how to fix it. There is also no air conditioning in the hotel. We are only here for three days. Our closet in Auckland was bigger than this room. Hardly room enough for us and the mosquitoes.
Mosquitoes are not a local Indian tribe. The Morai (local Indians) were quite adventurous. They crossed great stretches of ocean without GPS or even a compass. And they went back and forth so they knew where they were going. They followed currents, went against the wind, followed migration of birds, etc. I have trouble driving on the left with the steering wheel on the right using a Garmin. As we were driving along, Laurie commented that it would be much more difficult in the dark and even more so in the rain, both of which followed. Traffic was crawling out of Auckland. There are three million people in New Zealand, one million in Auckland, and they were all on the highway when we tried to leave town.
Our tour guide (pictured) told us about some weird birds they have here. One bird lives as a bachelor for years, then a particular plant flowers (once about every three years) he eats it and turns into Casanova, impregnating 20 or more females, then returns to bachelorhood waiting the the next blooms. The females are fine raising the babies on their own because there were no predators until the Europeans arrived. We also saw a 9 foot tall bird which went extinct in the 1400’s because they were good to eat. They didn’t know they had predators until it was too late.
Big bird is so big and he is behind glass so I couldn't get a good picture of all of him. You'll have to visit Auckland to see the rest of him. It will be worth the trip.
Back to the Morai, they make us look like wimps. They even had painful tattoos on their faces, cut the skin with stones, (no metal) then adding ink. The modern face tattoos are the conventional type but still look weird.
So I bought a sim card for Laurie’s iPad so it works great but all my email addresses are on my computer which can’t get through security, or my iPhone which is “locked” (thanks Apple and ATT). That’s why today is tomorrow. I’ll try to send this when we go to town to return our car tomorrow (today).
Back in Auckland, we had a day to do the tourist things. We visited Devonport on the ferry and rented bikes. My bike was not my size which kept our ride short. We climbed Victoria peak on foot to get great pictures of Auckland, then went to the Sky Tower to view Victoria peak. It was only fair. The weather was spectacular for high level sightseeing, but it seems those days (that day, actually) are behind us. We ran into a popcorn vending machine and happened to have the proper coin in pocket so we had to try it. I remember machines like that in movie theaters years ago, but I didn’t remember that it wasn’t so good.
Victoria Peak is at the center, not the volcano in the back. The museum has a volcano simulator which we are warned some people may find disturbing as an ash could engulfs the simulated house in which the simulatees watch the simultion.
Can you find the sky tower? It is the tower. For extra money they let you walk around the outside, and for even more money you can jump off but I think you are still attached in some way. We did not see any jumpers. It is the tallest man made structure in New Zealand.
I have had internet problems which I will spare you but I wasted a lot of time so this is Friday's email. More to follow.
Regards,
Steve & Laurie
PS: We'd like to hear from you so I at least know these emails are going out.
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