Invercargill

It's been cold and windy with lots of showers while we've been in Invercargill. We are off for Te Anau and Doubtful Sound the next few days. I will tell you more about Invercargill but here are a couple of pictures in the mean time.

Cheers!

Schmoose, Connecticut, & Harbor Cruise

Say Hello to Schmoose (sounds like Bruce), a moose in sheep’s clothing. We met Schmoose on the LINK bus that travels around Auckland City proper when we were returning to our hotel after a day at the Auckland Museum and Auckland Domain (sort of Auckland’s Botanical Gardens).

The little we know of Schmoose’s story so far is that he is “on the lam.” From what or who he is running from we’re not exactly sure but we told him he was welcome to travel with us for as long as he’d like.

In other news: We stuck to the plan on Friday with a Harbor tour during the afternoon and a nice dinner to celebrate our birthdays and anniversary. The Harbor tour was a one and a half hour tour that afforded some different views of the city and surrounding area. It also included an additional round trip to the suburb of Devonport which we took advantage of last night. But what I really want to talk about is the dinner we had the other night. Actually, not the dinner so much as the folks who own the restaurant.

The Grove restaurant was one of the four places recommended by the Auckland-based friend of Joanne Weir’s. It is located just five minutes (if that) from our hotel. At our 6 pm reservation time, when the maître d’ showed us to our table, we were the only people in the place – though not for long. The food was absolutely fabulous, and the waiter’s recommendation of a Destiny Bay cabernet from a winery on Waiheke Island (35 min ferry ride from Auckland) was spot on. But real part of this story is that you never know who you are going to meet.

It turned out, the maitre d’ was not only an owner of the restaurant but also born and raised in Connecticut, my home state. Michael Dearth stopped by our table to chat with us for a while and it was during our discussion that we learned was born and raised in Watertown, CT, went to University of New Haven, traveled for 2 years (including in NZ) and finished at Southern Connecticut State University. He met his wife Annette in San Francisco when they were both working there and eventually they settled in Auckland. So like I said, you never know who you’re going to meet.

Last night we took advantage of our extra ferry trip and traveled to Devonport, one of Auckland’s oldest suburbs and walked around the town for a while before getting some fantastic pictures of the sun setting on Auckland. I’ve posted one here is one for your enjoyment.

Today we fly to Invercargill, which is at the very south end of the South Island (see map below). It’s supposed to be a little cooler down there but still a lot warmer than the -50 degrees below zero that my friend Bret reported for Winnipeg, Canada for today.

Cheers!

Auckland Sunset from Devonport

More Pictures

The Long Flight - Or We Made it to Auckland 12-10-09

Anyone who has ever traveled a great distance in a jetliner will likely tell you the hardest part is when you actually arrive. If you’re one of those folks who has a hard time sleeping on planes (as I do) it can be even harder to adjust to the change of environment or time difference. Thankfully, I seemed to do better this time around. Tasha however needed a little more time. Fortunately the flight out was really nothing more than long and mind numbingly boring.

We arrived in downtown Auckland around 9am local time on Thursday, the 10th. Of course the hotel I booked didn’t have any rooms available until (what turned out to be) noon. So we killed the time by getting some breakfast in a little café. While we were sitting there waiting for our food we could hear a Scottish Bag Pipe band working their way up the street toward the café. Well it turned out the Bag Pipe procession was leading a group of freshly graduated seniors from a local school. Finally, students and bag pipers all converged in the middle of a three way intersection holding up cars, trucks, and buses for what may have been 10 minutes or so. Finally they started to disperse with some of the some of the parents, friends, and freshly graduated seniors spilling into the café to celebrate with cold beer or “bubbly.” (It’s 10 am in the morning but who cares? We’ve just graduated high school!! I like these people!) Why do I tell you all this? Well, even though it has been a long time since Tasha and I graduated high school we couldn’t help but feel slighted that our graduation processions paled by comparison.

Tomorrow during the day we are thinking of taking an Auckland Harbor cruise to see what the city looks like from the water. Tomorrow night we are planning on celebrating my birthday, Tasha’s birthday, and our 17th wedding anniversary with a nice dinner at a restaurant recommended by a friend of Joanne Weir’s. Yes that Joanne Weir (Weir on Cooking, PBS). I’m not going to tell the story, you’ll have to get it out of Tasha, she was sitting next to her after all.

That’s all for now folks.

Getting Closer

Well, we're getting closer now to our departure date. I've been reviewing reservations and taking in as much hockey as possible since I won't be able to view much of that while we are down there.

It's getting cold and rainy here which means it's getting warm and sunny in New Zealand.

Stay tuned....

This is a map of New Zealand which will give you (maybe) a perspective as to where we are.