Our tour began today with a nice easy start - an orientation tour round Auckland, at the civilised hour of 9 am. Our first destination was Mount Eden, one of the many volcanoes which surround Auckland, so we could see views over the whole city.
This view shows the Sky Tower and the Harbour Bridge, on a rather dull and blustery morning.
The crater of the volcano is known as 'the giant's food bowl' by local Maori people, and you can see why. I walked all round it to try to get a good shot - there is a path all round the top.
You can see other volcanoes around Auckland - there are 54 in all, though I can only see two in this picture.
The city itself is built on several of the 54. Our current hotel is up at the top of one, necessitating lots of hill climbing down when you want to go out for something, and lots of climbing back up, which is much less pleasant, on your return.
We drove to the memorial for a politician who became the first
Labour Prime Minister. There was a good view of Waitemata Harbour. This means 'sparkling water'. It wasn't doing too much sparkling this morning - no sun- but it is a beautiful blue.
We drove around part of the Harbour to see one of the beaches. It was cold and windy, so no swimming!
Then we were taken to the War Memorial Museum, which is famous and enormous. We had a highlights tour, and then a small group of us chose to stay on to see other parts of the Museum. It is so big there was no way we could do any more than scratch the surface, though we spent 4 1/2 hours there.
There were a great many Maori artefacts there as well as many things from other Pacific nations. There was the most beautiful Maori storehouse, to which my photo does not do justice; as light needs to be kept low, my flash was turned off.
Some of the carved Maori figures were simply stunning.
There were other carved figures too - this one is from Papua New Guinea, and reminds me vaguely of somebody I know...
There were textiles too - this wonderful bark cloth is from Tonga.
We went upstairs to look at the war part of the gallery. There are things from both the First and Second World Wars, as well as every other war in which New Zealanders have been involved. There is even a Spitfire - 127 New Zealanders flew in the Battle of Britain, and after the war, Air Vice Marshall Sir Keith Park (himself originally a New Zealander) asked for one to commemorate their service. This is it; unfortunately, I couldn't get far enough away from it to get it all in my picture.
The museum also has some original streets of late 1800s shops, which I had no time to examine properly.
We spent some time in a section on volcanoes (something else for Paul to worry will kill him, if an earthquake doesn't), and there is quite a big section on dinosaurs and other extinct animals. There is a Giant Moa too, I hadn't realised they came in different sizes and this one is huge - it is a female, they were apparently bigger. My photo is rubbish, but it does give an idea of the size.
We were completely exhausted by 3.30, and caught the courtesy bus back to the city. We walked to the supermarket for some toiletry essentials, then crawled back up the huge hill to our hotel. Tomorrow we leave Auckland for the Coromandel.
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