We rose a little later on Monday morning, had a cup of tea and said farewell to Janet and Sue. We wanted to sample the delights of Kenzie one last time before leaving Auckland. Having done so, we walked to the bus stop to catch a bus into town. Now you may not know this, but Auckland has the most expensive public transport system in NZ, Oz and somewhere else. To that study, we will add a personal observation - it is also unreliable. We waited for a bus to come for half an hour, but it obviously had better things to do than run around picking up passengers. We did, however, meet a charming lady from Wanaka (South Island near Queenstown), with whom we had a great chat and shared a taxi into town with her. She was a teacher and was in Auckland picking up her wedding dress because she's marrying a man from Skye on 17 December. We hope she has a great day, she is a lovely person.
Once in downtown Auckland, we made our way to the Britomart (is that where you buy British people?) (other cities call it Central Station) to drop the suitcase in a left luggage locker before spending the day sightseeing. The left luggage lockers, tired and shagged out after a long world cup, were working sporadically at best, but half an hour later we managed to get away with our suitcase left safely behind. We walked up and down Queen Street and then checked out the backpackers where we will stay for three nights for the RWC final on 23 October.
With five hours to spare, we took the ferry over to Devonport - a holiday village and naval base 10 minutes ferry ride across the bay from Auckland CBD.
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| Auckland CBD skyline from the Devonport ferry |
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| This shop supported our second favorite team |
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| Don't let your herbivore off the lead! |
On getting there, we walked round the waterfront and up and down the historic main street with its Fremantle-like buildings, but it was a bit dinky and looked to be largely designed to separate cruise ship passengers from their money as quickly as was reasonable. They also use cabbages for ornaments! There was some great kids art relating to the RWC in the shop windows. We had a beer and a sandwich at the Manuka Cafe and caught the ferry back to the CBD, picked up our suitcase from the land of left luggage and boarded the airbus to the airport at 5 pm. We had an uneventful flight and we were back in our Dunedin aerie by 9 pm.
We leave you with some images from this rugby-mad country to illustrate the black and white nature of their love for the game:
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