Auckland

Auckland was the end of our 30 day cruise.  After Auckland we fly to Perth, Australia for a few days and then we'll fly to Yangon, Myanmar for a land, lake and river adventure.

Below is the view of Auckland as we approach on the last day of the cruise. It's a proper looking city with about 1.7 million people.

Another ship, The Golden Princess is leaving Auckland. This is the same ship full of ugly tourists that we encountered in Akaroa..

As it's our last day on board I wanted to get a few shots of the young guys who served us so much booze over the last 30 days.

Bo...a really great server...he's from from Myanmar.

Roland, this guy just wandered around mostly. He was some kind of boss.

Joey, the bartender. Another good guy.  

And here's the video man...we're pulling into Auckland and he's got his face stuck in his laptop. Christ what a putz!

And Terri enjoying an Aperol Spritz.  Her favourite daytime cocktail while cruising. Note the cool shirt from Alice Springs.

The green and white ship is the M/V Carmen of the Wallenius Wilhelmsen shipping line. She's a car hauler and is capable of delivering almost 8,000 cars

We got to Auckland late in the day so our first night in Auckland was spent aboard the Silver Muse.

A view of downtown Auckland at night taken from our balcony. It'd not exactly Hong Kong.

Bright and early the next norming they kick us off he ship.  Need to make room for all the new passengers going back to Australia on the path we just came on. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and they'll be able to visit the places we missed.

We had had two excursions scheduled for today - both arranged by ourselves and not through Silversea.  The first is a helicopter trip over the city and surrounding area and the second is a guided trip, in a van, of the city.

Well the weather let us down again and the helicopter trip was cancelled.  So basically we just walked around for a few hours until the van trip started.

We watch hem taking down a HUGE Santa from a department store

And his reindeer...can't tell which one it is Dasher or Prancer... it's certainly not Rudolph.

And we see the Chinese tourists lined up outside the Gucci store.  We saw the same thing in Hong Kong recently. Most peculiar. And where do these people get their money? And they're so young...some pushing baby carriages.

In the afternoon we go on a van tour of the city with some other people.  So just some pics from the tour.

One of Auckland's beaches. Our guide warned us that nudity is acceptable on this beach. I didn't see any.

Our van tour took us across the river on this bridge.

and we had a pretty good view of the city from the other side

Checkout this sailing boat.

The guys have to lean way out to keep it from tipping over.

Very cool but not exactly a pleasure cruise. And where'd the third guy go?  The guy in black in the previous picture giving the orders.

Auckland is a city of many ancient volcanos. In this shot we're standing on the rim of one looking back toward downtown.

A different perspective.  The hills in the distance are also ancient volcano cones.

Auckland is a beautiful green city.

The Janice of Wyoming.  She has her own webpage.  Here.

Another beauty.  Couldn't see her name. In my next life I will try to be rich so I can buy one of these yachts.

Part of the New Zealand navy.

On our second and last day in New Zealand we visited Waiheke Island. Just a 40 minute ferry ride from Auckland and you are in a different world.

Next time we'll stay for a few days on Waiheke.

Some shots from the ferry as we head for Waiheke.

A HUGE navy ship...

An old lighthouse in the middle of the bay. I don't know if it's still in use.

Another very sleek and sexy sailing yacht.

One of the other islands in the bay.

Waiheke Island shown below. We mostly explored the west-most end around Oneroa. There's plenty more to explore when we return.

On Waiheke we hired a private guide to take us on a hike. Starting at the ferry terminal we started off on a clockwise walk. It turned out to be about 6 miles in total. About 2/3 of the way we came across a small restaurant where we had lunch and some beer.

Looking back across the bay to the ferry terminal.

What follows is just a bunch of pictures from our wee hike.

A shot of the bay and the ferry terminal from the opposite side of the harbour.  We've gone in a huge loop.

You can just see Auckland in the distance. We were told people commute to work from here daily.  I guess the time spent travelling on the ferry is worth it to live on such a beautiful island.

We saw a lot of really fantastic homes on the walk. Some people here have some serious money!

So that's it for Auckland and Waiheke.  

Perth is our next stop but it was included with the other Australian stops so what's next is our trip to Myanmar. What a place!