Auckland tour with wine tasting

Thursday, April 4, 2019  Auckland

We started the day at the Sky Tower observation floor, and then headed across town to the Auckland Museum. This penguin reconstructs an extinct prehistoric species that was five feet tall. In the afternoon, we enjoyed a ferry trip out to Waiheke Island to tour three wineries.

 Our morning destination, taken right out our hotel room window!

A view to the northwest, and the Auckland Harbour Bridge.

View to the west.

To the north, right where our cruise ship docked a couple weeks earlier.

One of numerous volcano craters in this area, Mt. Eden, as we look to the south.

A view of where we would be going next, the Australian War Memorial and Museum, to the southeast.

That pinkish path in the center is a bike path, right along next to the freeway. Turns out that the city has extensive bike paths, and many citizens commute using them.

Straight down from the tower was the McDonalds where a couple weeks earlier, Janet and I spend a while using their free wifi.

We had a fascinating visit at the museum. We learned about the Polynesian origins of the Māori and their cultures, both before the white man and since.

A model of a marae, a meeting house in each Māori village. We saw many of them during our visit in the North Island.

 

 A waka, a Māori catamaran. They arrived in huge wakas from Polynesia, about 700 years ago.

Māori treasures.

Māori totems.

We learned many examples of how in the past forty-or-so years, the NZ government has respected the 1840 Waitangi Treaty, giving the Māori rights to their lands. This poster documented a 1977 protest by a Māori woman and another fellow, which took place nearby (at Bastion Point). The gov't was attempting to take more ancestral land from the Māori, and they had finally had enough. It was a turning point for the gov't to realize it needed to live up to the 1840 treaty, even though in 1963, the gov't had already passed a law to "perpetuate" Māori language and culture. 

A photo of Sir Edmund Hillary, and one of his axes. As we would learn much more at the Hillary Alpine Center at Mt. Cook Village in nine days, he and Tenzing Norgay were the first to ascend Mt Everest, in 1953. 

It was also a War Memorial, and they engraved the names of all those who have died in wars. 

A close-up of a part of the memorial wall.

After departing the museum, we drove north to the harbor and east, past Bastion Point, where the land alienation protest took place for 507 days in 1977-8.  We continued past Mission Bay and other oceanfront villages, with their attractive parks and trendy restaurants.

We were dropped off at the ferry building, where we ate at some mobile-food trucks while waiting for our ferry to Waiheke Island. 

What a perfect day to sail out into the bay.

There's our Sky Tower, and the ferry building right of center.

 Auckland is getting farther back there.

Arriving at Waiheke. The island had many wineries, and we got to visit three.

Our first winery was Mudbrick. Our guide was from New York City, but she preferred living here, and said she loved this family-owned winery and restaurant. 

 Our guide told us all about the owners (and the pinot noir): "Robyn and Nicholas, who were working in reasonably mundane Auckland jobs, decided to do something different. In 1992, they bought a lifestyle block on the island – bare land with wonderful sea views, loaded with hope and promise."

 And they built it into one of the finest restaurants and wineries in all of Auckland.

My wine glass is looking at the incredible scenery to the north.

Our second winery, Stonyridge, was not as interesting. The hostess was pretty new at it, and we remained inside this little room.

 Our final winery, Te Motu, was very nice.

 We sat in the fresh outside patio, and tried some fine vintages.

How could I NOT buy a bottle of wine from our hostess? The one we bought was a Cabernet dessert wine.

That evening, we had a wonderful dinner with Bob and Suzanne Speer. Janet and Bob were camp counselors at Big Bear Lake in the early 70s. They hadn't seen each other in over 45 years, but Janet tracked him down during this trip (a massive and involved effort), and we were able to get together. Bob came here in 1975 on a student project, met Suzanne, and never left. They have been married 42 yrs and have four children, and his son was a pro bicycle racer. Frasers was in the Mount Eden section of Auckland.