New Year’s Eve

New Year's Eve - Auckland

We started the end of the year by going to Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Encounter & Underwater World. It is a weird little attraction that has a penguin colony, a walk though aquarium and replicas of the South Pole explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Antarctic base hut. You even get to take a simulated snowcat ride around the penguin enclosure with the announcer talking about white outs in Antarctica and having to wait them out. Obviously, whoever had written the script had never driven over the mountains to Vancouver in January.

My favourite display was a bit of a tentacle of a colossal squid, which is the giant squid’s big cousin. It has a really nasty hook right above the tentacle.

Next, we went with Bruce and Carolynn to have lunch with their friends Vanessa and Rod in their home on 6.5 acres outside of Auckland. They have a home that could easily grace the pages of Decorators Digest, 20 sheep (to keep the grass down), at least a dozen kinds of fruit and nut trees including a Quince tree and a half grown hedgehog living in the garden. By the way, you make jelly with quince fruit but then I am sure all of you already knew that.

We had an amazing lunch on the deck over looking the rolling hills. (Damn this is hard work.)

Next, we went to a massive black sand beach to watch the hang gliders and beach walkers. That evening we walked a couple of hundred metres from the house and welcomed the New Year while watching the fireworks erupt from the Sky Tower. Unlike Sydney, however, Auckland seemed rather empty for the holiday and I doubt if there were any street closures due to the streets being clogged with drunken revellers.