February 2, 2024

We had a nice smooth sail to Auckland and arrived at 8am. We had an early excursion and had to meet our tour at 8:15. We were doing the included tour which was basically the highlights of Auckland for 3 hours and that included 1.5 hours in the Auckland Museum. The bus ride took us to a lookout point where we could see the city of Auckland an had a beautiful garden up on a hill.

Auckland skyline with our boat

From there we went to the museum and as most of you know I am not a fan of museums but this one was pretty cool and very modern and huge. As the guide said you need all day there an hour and a half was a drop in the bucket. They had a national geographic photography display of the top 100 wildlife photos worldwide for a small additional price and Kathy and I opted for that. Lots of the photos that won were drone photos. It was a cool exhibit and used up a lot of our time so we ran up to see a few things that the guide had mentioned before heading back to the boat.

A view of the Auckland sky tower from the museum window

Once back at the pier we bough ferry tickets to ride to Devenport which is another quaint town 15 minute ferry ride from Auckland. We had a Segway tour scheduled for 3:30 so we went over around 12:30 and walked around and shopped some and had lunch.

Our sandwiches from a local cafe One of the large New Zealand banyan trees

The Segway tour turned out to just be Kathy and I and the owner of the business whose name was Pauline. She said she used to ahve workers but then covid came and the business died down and it is slowly coming back but for now she runs all the tours. She was about our age if not older. Pauline took us all over Devenport and stopped and showed us some of the historic houses and told us the history of Devenport. While we were outside one house right on the water from 1884 which had a lot of stained glass windows and was designed by a ship’s captain. The owner opened up a window and we said hello and that we were admiring the house and the stained glass windows and she said you need to see them from the inside and invited us in. Pauline did not know the lady and asked us if we wanted to go and we said sure. The house was old and had a ton of different rooms and a huge kitchen and a stairwell that went to the second floor that was from a sailing ship. Very narrow. Some of the posts used for the outside porch were from a ship’s mast.

The inside of the house with a walkway of stained glass that the original captain who owned the house put in.

We spent about 15 minutes talking to the home owner and I would have loved to have taken more pictures of the house but thought that would be too invasive. Pauline said she had never met the women before and she could not believe she invited us in.

The tour took us up to the top of the hill overlooking the harbor where the British installed guns in 1885 to protect the harbor from Russians and built tunnels underground. It was raining on and off but not to bad.

Us on the segways with Auckland behind us Kathy & Pauline in the tunnels

The view of Auckland from the top of the hill.

Most of the houses in Devenport are from the 1800s and the preservation society maintains strict rules about renovating the houses. Most have been renovated and are beautiful and go for millions of dollars.

The tour finished up at 6pm and we had a wonderful time. We took the 6:16 ferry back to Auckland and walked around a little bit looking for some place to eat. There are tons of eateries right on the water and it was just a matter of what we wanted to eat. We settled on a place where we could get fish and chips and it was great. Before we left the restaurant we went to the restroom and this poster was on the back of the bathroom door. We had never heard of it and thought it was a great idea.

After dinner we wandered around town and found a grocery store where we had to take pictures of the bags of chips that Michael & Kathy told us about yesterday and showed us pictures so we had to share.

These are potato chip bags in the store. Not sure that the graphics would make me buy them but we will see.

The sky tower was all lit up on our way back to the boat at about 9:30. You can jump from the sky tower and you are attached to 2 ropes that catch you. You can go up to the observation deck and watch people jump. The excursion manager on the ship said that if you are over 75 and want to jump it is free and that last year 30 or 40 people did it. We don’t know if this is true or not. We know that in the states they would never let anyone that old jump due to the liability but in New Zealand you can’t sue people so it may be true. We will let you know if we talk to anyone who did it.

We are glad to be spending 2 nights in Auckland. Gives us lots of time to do different things and tomorrow we are taking another ferry ride to a different island and going zip lining. Supposed to be another windy, overcast day with passing rain.