Here is our final stop in New Zealand. Auckland. City Of Sails. This city has one of the largest amounts of sail boats in it's harbor of almost any city in the world. It's a harbor town that has grown well beyond it's sea faring routes. It's New Zealand's largest city and is definitely their multi cultural hub of the country. We've been here a few days now and really have enjoyed ourselves. It's kind of like Melbourne, but much more toned down.

We spent the first day or so exploring the downtown area around our hotel. We walked down to the harbor area and did a lot of exploring. There is a lot of harbor to explore. Hotels, restaurants, boats, bars, shops. It's all there. We noticed how many active runners and cyclists were here as well, than realized there's a huge ironman taking place in a couple of days. Wi-Fi is definitely much easier to come by, albeit in short spurts. The downtown area is one big Wi-Fi zone. Anyone can have Wi-Fi for about 30 minutes for free. After that you have to find a coffee shop or MacDonald's with Wi-Fi.

Auckland is a hip and fresh downtown. There's loads of little food courts and places to eat. Lots of shopping of all kinds all within a few blocks of each other. The main street we spent a lot of time on is Queen Street (kinda like Toronto, eh?). We had the real deal on Turkish food, Japanese food, and Mexican food. Honestly, that's what's here! Want a kiwi burger? Go to Burger King! I'm not making that up. Given New Zealand's zeal for organically sourced food, all the food here tastes amazing!

Our first night we needed internet access to get some planning done. Didn't find a café at this point, so we went to the convenient store around the corner and used their "internet stations". It's so 1999! Only dingier since all of buddy's inventory was in boxes behind us. We bought an hour and sat in front of an 8 year old computer to get our stuff done.

We spent a day visiting Devonport Island, an island about 11 minutes from the main dock by ferry. It's a beautiful island with some parks and beautiful old architecture from 1800's. Rows and rows of streets full of café's and little boutique shops with unique wares. It's very hilly, which gives it some of the best views in town. People do live on this little island, but at a considerable expense, especially if you consider taking the ferry to work every day.

Next day was spent at Kelly Tarlton's Sea Aquarium. This place was very cool! First off, we were driven there in their shark bus. That's right, a bus that's a shark! Excited yet? When we got there we went in and saw how the Antarctic explorers lived and all the equipment they used. Very interesting and educational. Let's just say these guys must have loved what they did in order to willfully suffer scurvy and malnutrition to understand the Antarctic. Once through the history lesson, we saw the amazing penguins! These penguins were much larger than the ones on Phillip Island. They had King Penguins, just like in Happy Feet. Beautiful large penguins about 1.5 meters tall with bright orange feathers. Very regal when standing there, which they did a lot. After penguins it's into the shark tunnel! There's a large glass tunnel that runs along the bottom of the shark aquarium. The tunnel has a conveyor belt we stand on that takes us through while we literally hang out in the living environment of sharks, large fish, and stingrays. It was amazing seeing these scary and daunting creatures from their belly and sides, not something you can do easily. The sharks looked mean and scary, the large fish were, well, large. The stingrays were unreal! They moved through the water like sheets of silk.  It was mesmerizing just to watch them. We went around the tunnel 2-3 times to get all the shots and enjoy these marvelous creatures. We later went to the gift shop where Mr. Moo made lots of friends.

Our final day in Auckland was spent shopping on the main streets and sampling the city culture more like a local than anything else. I can honestly say after all the time we spent in New Zealand exploring it the way we did we started to feel like locals. The warmth of the people, the vibe of the cities, driving the roads and experiencing the countryside and cities as we did really brought us closer to this country in a way I don’t remember doing before. As we say farewell to New Zealand we do so feeling more like old friends than casual acquaintances.

We are now heading to Sydney for 4 days of excitement. Take care.

AK & AB