Wednesday, February 20th

Shawn and I took Auckland by storm on Wednesday by grabbing a map from the crucial information center and decided to guide our own walking tour of the city.  The majority of our time in Auckland has been by the harbor (about 2 blocks from our hostel), so we thought we would see what else Auckland had to offer.

We headed South in the very hilly city of Auckland, went through the University of Auckland campus (which is quite large), took a detour to the Auckland Tennis Arena and watched the Junior International Championships for a wicked price of free-ninety nine!!  We watched an awesome New Zealander bloke (guy) who could not have been more than 16 absolutely torch his Mexican counterpart — I’ll be keeping an eye out at the US and Australian Opens. 

After our detour at the tennis arena we continued our trip into the Auckland Domain (another word for park) and watched some young primary school kids play cricket (despite some serious inquiry, we still have little idea what this sport is all about — what type of sport can actually end in a tie without overtime??)  We continued on (what we thought) was the right track and ended up at the War Memorial Museum and little idea how to find the path, so we headed back to the city.

 On our way back, Shawn and I stopped at New Zealand’s version of the Space Needle, the Sky Tower.  The Sky Tower is the tallest edifice in the Southern Hemisphere reaching a height of 328 meters (1076 feet).  If you look hard at our pictures, you can appreciate its height and also make out a person jumping from the top, which is called ‘controlled base jumping’ and is the Diet Cola of Extreme, so we passed.  The Sky Tower has a casino, a few restaurants, and I believe a hotel or two.

What did we learn about Auckland today?  Well Auckland is built upon about 50 volcanoes dating back thousands of years ago and is one of the few cities in the world to have harbors on two separate major bodies of water.

Too Easy,

Shawn & Scott

Next up: Surf City: Piha