Saturday, February 21, 2009
Saturday, take one! Today occurs twice for us; first in Auckland and again tomorrow in Moorea, Polynesia when we cross back over the international dateline.
The first take on Saturday was a lazy morning getting ready to fly from Queenstown to Auckland. We packed up our stuff and left our place around 10 am. We then hung around the Queenstown airport until we left. It was still rainy and cold (around 55 – 60 degrees). The airport was small and had just one runway. Typical of such airports includes a walk outside to get onto the airplane. Seemed like a long, depressing walk, as we knew the end was near.
We arrived in Auckland around 2:30 p.m., grabbed a cab and headed to our hotel. From there we went down to the Wharf for dinner. We stopped at a place called Traffic for a drink and some snacks. We went for al fresco, but everyone outside was smoking like chimneys. We left the bar and walked around the main wharf area, finally selecting a placed called the Y-Not for dinner. The food was good, but it had some of the worst service in all of New Zealand. Our waitress went on her dinner break for the entire time we were there and never turned us over to anyone. It is quite possible that each member of the waitstaff came to our table at least once, but rarely was very helpful.
We then walked back to our hotel looking for suntan lotion along the way in preparation for Tahiti. All of the pharmacies were closed and we finally found a mini mart that had lotion. The downtown area was alive with youth. We walked through a distinctly Asian part of town. Soon we walked among several Sake bars. Mike began to pine for Sake, but no one was interested in catering to the rant. Instead, we had a few drinks at our hotel and went to bed early. Our flight to Tahiti leaves at 7:00 a.m. and we are quite a distance from the airport, requiring a 3:45 a.m. alarm call.
Observation: Auckland is just a big city that we were glad to stay for just one night.