When we opened the curtains in the morning we noticed that our Viking Orion ship was already docked nearby. It arrived early in the morning on the last leg of its cruise from Sydney, the reverse of our itinerary. Passengers would have one Auckland day before they would disembark and we would board. It’s pretty amazing how well all this is orchestrated yet one can only imagine how difficult it must be for the crew to turn over an entire ship full of passengers and staterooms in just a few hours.
The hotel’s breakfast buffet was included in our room and it was decent. It seemed like there were easily several hundred of us fellow Viking cruisers in the hotel for the two-night Auckland extension.
We finished breakfast and got ready for the 9:30am bus tour of Auckland included in our extension. We met our guide and driver, Owen, who drove us through the downtown central business district, through the Auckland Domain (a sort of Central Park) and past the Auckland War Memorial Museum (which may or may not also be the Auckland Museum…we’d seen it referred to as both and Owen was not able to clear it up). We would visit the museum later in the trip so no time to stop now (or take photos).
We drove east to Michael Joseph Savage Memorial Park for a 30-minute photo op. This park with a nice view of the harbor was set on an expanse of green pasture identified by Owen as Maori land. He told a confusing story of how there had been housing at some point on the land but it had been given back to the Maoris and the housing removed. It took further research for me to begin to understand the more interesting and complicated story. In a microcosm, this site of Takaparawhau or Bastion Point reflected the history of disputes, dispossession and partial restitution of Maori land since European arrival and the still-contentious Treaty of Waitangi signed in 1840. I doubt I can do the story justice, but the Maori tribe that controlled most of the Auckland area by the time of the treaty saw most of its land become English property over the ensuing decades. There was a slight reprieve in the 1930s when agreements were struck with Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage to preserve some of this sliver of the peninsula (explaining why Savage is buried in this memorial) but within a few decades even that was under threat. In the 1970s, responding to proposals to turn what was left into an expensive housing development, Maori protesters occupied the land and eventually won its return to the tribe. The tribe’s marae or sacred space and community hall now sits at the top of the land.
Next we drove back through town and crossed the Auckland Harbour Bridge. We drove onward through Takapuna and down to Devonport. Barb and I took the option to leave the tour and walk through the town of Devonport. We window shopped and found a pair of books for Allie and Emmy. The Devonport Library had a statue of Benjamin, the library’s cat for 15 years. There was a waterside park with a nice view of the harbor. Here is where I will mention how ugly and out of scale are container port cranes. Container shipping in general is a blight on the beauty of ships and harbors.
We took a quick ferry back downtown, giving me a chance to snap way too many photos of our ship, the Viking Orion. You never know when we will see it again from these angles.
During the previous day’s downtime in the lounge, Barb made friends with cruise veterans Barb and Karen. They invited us to lunch at The Occidental, a Belgian mussels and beer place. Sounded good. The new Barb had MS and moved very slowly with a walker. We got a taxi from the hotel to go a few short blocks to the restaurant and got a table with a view of the Super Bowl on TV. I got a good dark Belgian beer and a lamb stew with frites. My Barb got mussels with a cream sauce but they weren’t very good. At least she liked the frites. We heard many stories of Barb and Karen’s other cruises all over the world. It was our first encounter with a community of people that love the atmosphere and lifestyle of cruising.
After lunch, we found a cab for Karen and Barb, with the help of a nice waiter from Massachusetts. Barb and I windowshopped our way down Queen Street to our hotel. We got back to the room around 4pm. I went across the street to a liquor store to stock up for the cruise (an expensive bottle of Jim Beam Rye…New Zealand only seemed to produce wine and I had some of that already). I snapped another shot of the ship, for good measure. Barb napped, I showered and worked on my notes.
…and that it was outside a McDonalds
I had dinner at Oyster and Chop: grilled prawns and a nice salad with pear, walnuts and blue cheese. Barb stayed in, sleeping then having her leftover sandwich snacks. We packed our bags and got ready for check out and embarkation in the morning.
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