Back to Auckland for the Semi-Finals

We're back in Auckland for the final few days.  Went to the history museum, Waiheki Island, Mt. Hobson Park, and then the two rugby semi-final matches.

Waiheki Island is stunning.  It's about a half-hour ferry ride from downtown Auckland, and home to wineries, beaches, olive groves, and very expensive homes.  You can see downtonw Auckland in the picture above if you enlarge it.

Downtown from a park near the History Museum.

Looking towards downtown from Mt. Hobson Park.

Also from Mt. Hobson, this is Rangitoto Island, a scenic preserve.  It's about 850 feet tall, 3 miles across, and it grew out of a volcano that erupted in the middle of the bay about 700 years ago.

France beat Wales in the first semi-final.  A key player from Wales was thrown out of the game for making a controversial tackle, and they had to play a man down for more than half the match.  The ref called it exactly as the rules require, but wow, in a semi-final match for the World Cup?

I'm sure that everybody's favorite match was NZ vs. Australia.  Can't beat the atmosphere for this one.  Talk about a home-field advantage, though.  Australia hasn't won a match at Eden Park in 20 years.

Looking back on it all, I can only say that this has been the trip of a life-time.  I hiked some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, watched the highest level of rugby played in the sport's most revered stadium, and shared it all, including great food and drink, with my best friends and rugby teammates that I've known for 25 years.

Doesn't get any better that that.

Tane Mahuta

Heading south now, towards Auckland, we are only a short distance from the Wiapoua Forest, which is home to about three quarters of New Zealand's remaining mature kauri trees, including Tane Mahuta, the largest and oldest living kauri tree.  The name means Lord of the Forest, and the tree is estimated to be up to 2,500 years old.  It is 168 feet tall, and the trunk has a girth of just over 45 feet.

Kauri wood has some amazing characteristics - no knots, a beautiful color and grain, and it doesn't rot.  It's no longer legal to harvest kauri trees, so they dig up old tree trunks and recycle old buildings that were once made of kauri, and use the wood for high-end furniture and artworks.   Ancient tree trunks as much as 50,000 years old have been found in peat bogs, and their wood is perfectly preserved.

Hokianga Harbor

While in Paihia, we met a neat local Maori gentleman who was working as a tourist volunteer, providing information and helping out all the silly foreigners like us.  He said that was a direct descendant of one of the original Maori chiefs that signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, essentially the founding document for New Zealand as a nation, and as colony of the British Empire.

We told him that we were looking for some neat things to see, and he pointed us to a little town called Opononi.  It's on the western coast, just east of the mouth of the Hokianga Harbor.  He said that this was the location of the first Maori settlement in New Zealand, and that there is a monument there, but that it is only open to Maori descendants.

We believe that this is the monument, but we couldn't find a way to get up there.  We asked a local if we could cross his property to hike up there, and while he didn't say that we couldn't go, he said that there were bulls there that were known to charge at people.  So, we decided to enjoy the view from the road.

Looking north across the Hokianga Harbor.  According to our guide, the first Maori to arrive in New Zealand paddled through here and established their first settlement nearby.

Looking north-east from the same location.

Looking east towards Opononi.

Looking south along the Tasman Sea (above).

Bay of Islands

We've got 5 days to play around now, so we went about 3 hours north to a little town called Paihia on the Bay of Islands.  It's about 50 miles from the northern-most tip of the North Island.  As the name would suggest, there are a bunch of small islands out in the bay, some have a few scattered homes, but most are uninhabited.

It's a beautiful spot, but once again, the weather wasn't being very cooperative.  Cool and drizzly.

We took this jet-boat out for a ride among the various islands, but clouds and mist rolled in to the point that we really couldn't see much, and the trip was cut short.

We did get to see Cook's Cove, which is on Motuarohia Island.  It's said to be the place where Captain James Cook first anchored upon his arrival to New Zealand on October 6, 1769.  In 1768, the 40 year-old Cook was chosen to lead a mission to the South Seas to observe the 1769 transit of Venus (they wanted to use the data to try and estimate the distance between the Earth and the Sun).  A separate and secret part of the mission, revealed to the crew only after they captured the information on the transit, was to search for evidence of unknown southern continents.  Cook and his crew were the second known Europeans explorers to visit New Zealand (after Able Tasman in 1642).  Cook arrived first at this spot, and then spent the next 6 months circumnavigating the islands.  He was the first to map the entire coastline of New Zealand.

Auckland

It's about a 10-hour drive from Wellington to Auckland.  Oh well, it had to get done.

New Zealand has a population of about 4.4 million, and 1.4 million of them live in Auckland - over 30% of the population.  Rugby is their national sport, so it's exciting to be here for the World Cup.  We're staying in a really nice area called Remuera, which is about 3 miles south of downtown.

Eden Park is the Mecca of rugby here.  We watched France beat England in one quarter-final, and New Zealand beat Argentina in the other.

Pretty decent seats for the NZ - Argentina match.  What an experience!

Able Tasman Natl. Park, the Cook Strait, and Wellington

Though we wanted to get an early start today, my buddy Dave was having a bit of an issue with his new camcorder, so it took some time to find an electronics shop and get that resolved.  On top of that, the road to Able Tasman is somewhat challenging - narrow, hilly, and twisting.  Put yourself in a 6-person motor-home while driving on the wrong side of the road, and it can be a little scary.  It's also the opposite direction from Picton, so we'll have to back-track.  But what the heck, this is probably the only time that we're going to get a chance to see it the Able Tasman National Park.

That's our motor-home above.  A 6-person configuration works pretty well for four rugby guys.

Looking east across the Tasman Bay and back toward Nelson, the mountains on the horizon are over 30 miles away.

It's about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Able Tasman to Picton, the port city were we're going to drive our motor-home onto the 6:00 pm ferry to Wellington.  The total fare for a vehicle and 4 passengers was something like $400, and since it's World Cup time, reservations are very limited.  It's a 4-hour cruise across the Cook Straight, and if we miss this boat, we'll probably miss the first two rugby matches in Auckland this weekend.  So, we didn't get to spend much time here at Able Tasman, but what we did see was beautiful.

The last several miles of the road to Picton is a beautiful twisty run along the Grove Arm of the Queen Charlotte Sound.  The boat ride through the sound and out into the Cook Straight is supposed to be magnificent.  Picton itself, however, seemed like a gritty little town, and when we got to the ferry landing, we found out that the boat was running 4 hours late.  Instead of arriving in Wellington at 10:00 pm, it now looks like it's going to be 2:00 am!

We walked over to the tourist area of downtown Picton, which was really quite nice, and found our way into the Picton RSA Club, which is kind of like a Veterans' lodge.  The RSA was founded by World War I vets, so it was full of old military guys.  We found a guy to "sponsor" our entry, and we enjoyed a good meal, cheep beer, and made a few friends.  

The 4-hour crossing turned into the trip from hell.  If I had know better, would have stayed in the motor-home and slept, but you're not really allowed to do that.  The passenger decks are pretty nice, and there's a bar and a few places to eat, but it's no different that being in an airport at 2:00 am.  Nobody really wants to be there.

Kaikoura, then over to Nelson

We headed up to Kaikoura, a cool little coastal town a few hours north of Christchurch.

It was dark when we arrived, but we found a great little restaurant, and our server happened to be a college student from Michigan.  She said that she recognized our "accents".

I'm sure that this is a beautiful little town, but it's rainy and a bit cold.  Not the best climate for the beach, so we decided to move on across to Nelson.  Even though it was overcast, the inland scenery was still beautiful.  We drove for hours, and hardly saw another vehicle on the road.

Nelson is on the northern tip of the South Island, and close to the Able Tasman National Park.  It was dark again when we arrived in Nelson this evening, and we're going to try and see the park in the morning before we head over to Picton to catch the ferry.