Overview Hawaii Sydney Santa Barbara
Got going early to breakfast. We had both pretty much packed last night and were ready to hit the road back to the airport for our trip to Auckland. We took the Airport Express bus back to the Sydney airport and checked in with Qantas. We ended up in row 54 instead of in the back of the plane. We went through security and then to gate 24. The flight left at 10:45 and arrived about 3 hours later.
It was raining pretty hard when we finally landed in Auckland and with a 2 hour later time difference, this day was pretty much shot.
When we were going through customs, the locals get pretty mad if you try to bring in fruits and we had two of the apples that we had bought yesterday while we were on the tour. We could not take them through and had to throw them away. Another Bummer!
I changed some more money while Chearl went to find the hotel board. She decided on a nice tidy place called the Airport Harbor View Motel which listed itself as being five minutes from the airport. I called and the owner drove out to pick us up. He took us back to the hotel and we had a room on the second floor with a spa in the bathroom.
We were really not near anything. We were across from a cement plant, I think. We discussed with Nigel where to go for dinner and other relevant topics and he mentioned that there was a restaurant that he could take us to where we could eat and then they would bring us back to the motel. We thought about this for a while and then decided just to call a cab to go into the city.
Nigel called his buddy John Kirwan who came and picked us up, took us into town and promised to return for us at 10. He took us around parts of the city and finally dropped us off at Auckland's Sky Tower downtown.
We walked through the building for a while and ended up at a cafeteria inside which turned out to be quite nice. Then we took the elevator up into the observation deck to see the city. Unfortunately, the city would not be seen due to the rain and fog. Quite an eerie night.
We then walked through a few blocks within the city before returning to the tower while we waited for John to return for us. He arrived shortly after 10 and we talked on the way back about him driving us down to Rotorua tomorrow for a day trip. We got back to the hotel and the TV did not have a channel selector on it. I guess we read a little until we went to sleep.
We got up early, finished packing and waited for John to arrive. He arrived shortly after 8 and we headed off to Rotorua for the day. We stopped at a little roadside stand on the way down and had a huge breakfast of New Zealand bacon and other nice goodies.
We headed south through the cities of Hamilton and Cambridge before we stopped at a working sheep farm just outside Rotorua where there was a little hands on show featuring a New Zealand farm. There were sheep dogs, cow milking, butter churning and other parts of farm life demonstrated. Then we drove across the street to a Kiwi park where there were some rather large fish, pigs and kiwis on display.
After this we drove to the Maori tribal village and waited for a tour of the village. We took a tour of the education building and then boarded a train for the trip across the grounds. We stopped at geysers, mud pots and other works of geothermal art. After the tour we toured some more of the old hot spas in the town before heading back to Auckland.
The trip back north was pretty uneventful and John dropped us off at the airport. We paid the man and said goodbye and then went in to see what we could finagle with Air New Zealand to get some choice seats in the coach cabin for our 12 hour flight back to Los Angeles. We had talked to the girl at the Customer Service desk yesterday and she had tried to hold an emergency exit row for us. When we arrived there tonight, they could not issue boarding passes since we were non-revenue. She told us that we might check back in an hour to see if anyone else had claimed them. That did not sit very well with me. If I am going to be on a twelve hour flight, I would just as soon pay for the tickets, get some service and travel in some comfort. So we went ahead and put two business class tickets on the American Express card and headed to the business class lounge.
The lounge had an open bar set up and I took full advantage of that. I got onto the plane and then I just slept for about nine hours straight. The flight turned out to be quite pleasant.
Until Los Angeles.
We arrived on time (about 2:30 p.m.) and we got our bags and headed for Hertz. We ended up in a line at the rental place and after about an hour finally ended up with a Toyota Corolla which they referred to as a "mid sized" car. We get out of the lot and begin to head north to Santa Barbara. It took us another 3 hours to get about 90 miles north. We found a room at a little motel along the coast and checked in for the night.
We walked around the area by the pier looking for a place to eat. I had found an Italian restaurant when we were driving around, but could not find it again on foot. We finally settled for a little seafood restaurant which turned out to be very good. After dinner we walked along the beach back to the hotel. It is still Thursday and it has certainly been a long one.
Overview Hawaii Sydney Santa Barbara