Dateline January 24, 2015, Auckland, Welcome to New Zealand
We arranged the New Zealand portion of the trip through Playing Around New Zealand, Ltd., a tour operator that specializes in matching travelers with the country's best golf and scenery. Will Owen of Playing Around met us at the airport and drove us into Auckland, settling us at the Stamford Hotel, a beautiful place right on the harbor. After we checked in, we walked the dock front and found a place for dinner, then back to the hotel for a long night's sleep.
Will picked us up the next morning for a two-hour driving tour of the city. The urban area of Auckland has a population of over 1.4 million, and the city has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world. It accounts for thirty-one percent of New Zealand's total population.
Mount Eden and a little history.
From the top of Mount Eden, an inactive volcano right in the middle of the city, you can see the harbor in every direction. The Maori settled the area around 1350, and developed many of their villages on the volcanic mountains for the natural fortifications. The introduction of firearms by European traders made the old tribal balances much harder to maintain, and the unrest that followed eventually opened the area to European settlement. In 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi formally turned Auckland over to the British Crown.
From Mount Eden we could also see the local stadium where the World Rugby Championships have been played. Rugby is the national game of New Zealand, and the team is called the All Blacks. They are the current holders of the Rugby World Cup. There are several stories about how they got the name. The one that holds up is that they have worn all-black uniforms since their 1905 tour of the British Isles, and the nickname stuck from there. (A separate story about a 1922 newspaper article calling them "all backs" and being misread as "all blacks" is the kind of thing your tour guide will tell you anyway, even if it isn't quite true.)
The America's Cup and the waterfront.
New Zealand won the America's Cup in 1995 and successfully defended it in Auckland in 2000. In preparation for the defense, the city cleaned up the waterfront, moved out the industrial uses, and built up the docks, restaurants, and hotels that the harbor area is known for today. Auckland is also one of the great sailing cities in the world. One in five residents owns a boat. Will drove us around the beach communities and the number of vessels at anchor or in the docks really is staggering.
Waiheke Island.
In the afternoon we took the ferry out to Waiheke Island to see the scenery and try a couple of wineries. The crossing gave us beautiful views of Auckland and the smaller islands along the way. On the island we got on the Hop On bus and rode across to our first stop.
Our first winery was Stonebridge. They had a Cabernet they spoke of with great pride that was selling for over $250 a bottle. We took a flight that included a taste. Interesting, but not a wine we would put on our must-have list. We had a small lunch and waited for the next bus. We rode to the end of the line for a look at the beach, then took the return bus back toward the ferry, with a stop at Cable Bay.
Cable Bay turned out to be the gem. The wines were lovely and the cheese was lovelier. We were served by our new friend Lizzie Dunkley.
Lizzie is from England, and was four years into a solo trip around the world. She had lived in Singapore, France, and Thailand, worked in Australia, and was now in New Zealand. She wanted to get a lot of travel under her belt before going back home. She had plans for the United States and South America still to come. When we asked about "Mr. Right" back in England, she laughed and said that would complicate her plans, but that she hoped to meet a Prince Charming when she got home. She showed us a shortcut back to the ferry, and we made the return crossing back into Auckland.
Auckland's 175th birthday.
The weekend we were there happened to be the 175th anniversary of the founding of the city, and the waterfront was set up for street fairs and performances. Coming off the ferry, the first thing we ran into was an English contortionist folding himself into a glass box, which is the sort of thing you don't see every day. We watched for a while and walked back to the hotel.
In the morning, off to tour the Bay of Islands and play our first round of New Zealand golf at Kauri Cliffs.
