Trains, Planes and Ferries

Hi everyone!

I wanted to fill you all in on our trip to Auckland last weekend. We left Saturday morning and returned Tuesday night. Since I have lots to report, I will try to break it down to some extent...

The trip to Auckland (PART ONE)
As I mentioned before, we took the Overlander from Wellington to Auckland - the countryside we passed through was gorgeous! (These pictures were taken from the observation car - an open air portion of the train)

The viaduct:

Some sheep:
(Before this train ride, I had yet to see ANY sheep - and for everyone's information, I just did a little bit of research, per the government (population.govt.nz), the ratio of sheep to people here is approximately 10:1. Specifically - March 2007 population of 4.18 million people, June 2006 population of 40.1 million sheep. In 1982 the ratio was 20:1. The current ratio in Australia is 5:1.)

Some lambs: There were so many little lambs - and they were so cute! Whenever I mentioned how cute the lambs were, Erik would say "Mmmmm. Lamb chops!"

About the train - I think the two of us dropped the average age of passengers by about 10 years... it was a retiree haven! We met some nice people on our journey, and naturally some characters as well -

Woman with Chicago Bulls sweatshirt on - At first, we were really excited to make a Chicago connection. When we asked about the sweatshirt (circa 1988), we learned that she bought it from a secondhand store in Melbourne. When asked what drew her to it, she responded that she "really liked the bull on it." I thought this was great! It reminded me of the time in high school when I picked up a shirt from Harrod's while visiting London with my Grandma, aunt, & cousin - I bought it because I liked the colors and the 'deer' on it, which I now know is actually a springbok and it's a South African rugby jersey, who knew? It had McNick colors.... but I digress. Back to this lady, she was a strange bird. She told us how she and her mate were sick with bronchitis and then wanted to know if we wanted to play cards with them. We kindly declined and decided to check out the rest of the train instead.

Couple, South Island beef farmers - They were great!! After picking up a tasty meal from the food car, we moved to a different car (away from bronchitis) and met this lovely couple from just south of Christchurch. They possessed that perfect balance of interest and disinterest you look for in a new travel companion. It was great hearing about all of their tramping trips in and around NZ. To put it simply, they were very friendly and we really enjoyed sitting with them.

The trip to Auckland (PART TWO)
This is a picture of Erik I took while we were hanging out on the observation deck. Does he look confused to you? Do you see the look of growing concern? He is trying to hear the conductor's announcement -
The concerning announcement was that the train ahead of us had derailed and they were going to bus us from National City to Auckland (we were about halfway at this point). We quickly looked up where exactly we were in our travel books, called a hostel and made plans to stay overnight rather than take the bus the rest of the way. This was actually a blessing in disguise, since the train ride was 12 hours. It was nice to have a break in there. The town we stayed in was tiny-tiny, not even 1 sq. mile! It was a ski town, and since we were not prepared for skiing, we did some hiking in our city slicker clothes, but we lived to tell the tale!

We were able to take the same train the next day - the train was, again, very comfortable and we arrived into Auckland on Sunday night.

Auckland
The 3 main things we did Auckland were Rangitoto, Devonport, & the aquarium.

Here is a photo from the ferry we took from Auckland to Rangitoto -

RANGITOTO
This island was formed by a volcano about 600 years ago. We took the ferry out Monday morning for a hike to the summit and to the lava caves. It was a ton of fun. The weather was perfect and we enjoyed being out and about. Granted, we also felt a little out of shape - this volcano is not very high, but there were some pretty steep parts. Here is a picture of me at the top -
DEVONPORT
Devonport is a sleepy little town across from the Auckland harbor (we took the ferry from Rangitoto to Devonport). We enjoyed a very nice lunch outside and climbed this massive hill there to check out the view (in the picture above). Since I considered us to be climbing experts now that we had a 260 meter volcano under our belt, I suggested we forego the path and run straight up - it was really steep - you couldn't even stand straight up on it. We had fun and the view of Auckland was fabulous. Here is Erik crawling his way up. I am not sure that this picture does the slope justice, but all the same, here it is:
KELLY TARTLON'S UNDWERWATER WORLD
On Tuesday we decided to check out the Auckland aquarium. My travelbook states that it "is possibly the most ingenious use of converted sewage tanks ever." Huh. This begs the question- what else have sewage tanks been converted into? Anyway, I do not recommend this place. It was expensive and rundown.

The main attraction was the Anarctic exhibit. This exhibit can only be viewed via the Snowcat. The Snowcat is a sort of like an enclosed tractor on rails with large windows and four benches for people to sit on (all face forward). It is fully automated and lasts 7.5 minutes (literally, that's what the sign says). It is a total ripoff of the buggies haunted houses use at the amusement parks. The first section of the Snowcat takes you through a vertigo tunnel - again, just like a haunted house, this is where you travel through a tunnel and the walls spin around you. The narrator informed us that this was the blizzard portion of the ride. The Snowcat continues to crawl very slowly through the rest of the exhibit, which included live penguins, fake animals, and the flags of all the countries that signed a treaty about Anarctica. Hmmm...

As I alluded to before, there were some fake animals to be seen. Here is my favorite picture from the Snowcat - as we entered this section the narrator said something along these lines - "Seals also live in the arctic. The seals eat fish, but the seals also have predators. Predators like the killer whale!!!" Then this thing rises (as you see it, the jaws do NOT move) from the water:
Yes, that is a fake whale with a fake seal in it's mouth. Lame.

The Underwater World did have HUGE sting rays and HUGE crayfish which were really cool. I had a hilarious time there - you had to laugh as you went through some parts. The true highlight of our visit was a video about the ocean food chain. It was just like something you may have seen on the Planet Earth series from the Discovery Channel. Fascinating.

Wrap-up
The entire trip was a lot of fun. We made the most of the unexpected on the train, saw some beautiful scenery, and learned a lot about how you feel the day after climbing steep hills (sore!). If you made it this far in this post - good work my friend! Keep in touch everyone - I hope to write soon about my job and other happenings here in Wellington. Take care!