1st day in Auckland, New Zealand

Saturday, February 5, 2011 – sea
Ensemble cocktail party, questions and answers with Astronaut Duke, Chris Blackmore (magician) and Peter Cousens (London West End singer –fantastic!), lunch with friend, travel work, goodbyes to those leaving the ship in Auckland and cloudy cooler weather – about 65 degrees. Mongolian cookout for lunch on the upper deck; no exercises since I pulled a leg muscle. Dinner with friends at the late seating. Culinary demonstration of Le Cirque’s crème brulee with Pinnacle Grill Chef Das. Book club, star gazing…

Sunday, February 06, 2011 – Auckland, New Zealand
Tried to meet up with friend and go to a softball game but found out he was in Sydney as his friend had the lead tenor role in Carmen at the Sydney Opera House – how exciting!
Free bus around the city center; up to the Sky Tower 61 floors above the city and watched people do the Sky Walk and Sky Jump and toured the casino; the glass floor panels scare me. You look straight down to the street way, way below! Cloudy and humid day about 68 degrees. Computer work at the nearby Hilton hotel. Great restaurants at the waterfront near our ship with a nice sunset. Some of the group went on the America’s Cup excursion and other to the Antarctica exhibition of Kelly Tarlton. Remembered our past visit to the Auckland Museum with an interesting collection of Maori artifacts and the Domain/park around it.

The nearby Edwardian ferry building from 1912 is still used; lovely design with red iron gates.

Sheep outnumber the people in NZ. With a population of 4.3 million people, there are 45 million sheep. The first large-scale wool producing operation was established in the 1850s.

With the advent of refrigerated shipping, a booming meat industry began to replace wool in the 1880s. New Zealand has some of the strictest customs and quarantine laws in the world. We are not allowed to bring any foods off the ship – they have sniffing dogs as we exit. They check our identification cards/driver license two times before we get on the ship: one as we enter the terminal and again before entering the ship. And they check the expiration date of our drive license! Now if the photo and names match, why is the expiration date of such importance?! This one we can’t figure out – we are not allowed to use our passports as they are kept for us for the entire voyage so we use our drivers license. The Canadians had a problem as their ID had no expiration date.