Mission Bay and Achilles Point

December 14 in Auckland, Allie and I spent some more time with her cousin in Mission Bay for lunch and some ice cream.  We headed over to Achilles Point afterwards. While taking some photos from the overlook, another person approached me with his significant other and made a comment about my performance earlier in the week. Allie and her cousin were thoroughly confused. However, it is not an uncommon event for me to be recognized as someone I'm not. It did take me a second, but I quickly commented with a smirk to the man (while half addressing Allie), "You think you know me!"  I then politely explained to him that I wasn't who he thought and that others often confuse me for other people too. At first the man was suspicious that I claimed to not be who he thought I was, but Allie's confusion at the whole engagement allowed the interaction to end with a light chuckle by him and me.

Allie and I ended the day with dinner at a very nice Italian restaurant back in CBD called Amano, where the food and drinks were great.

Homebound

The next day, we went for a morning walk to a breakfast spot. I spotted a black and white bird.  Later that day was our our flight home. Delays to this flight involved a replaced plane since the scheduled plane had maintenance issues. However, we still made it back to San Francisco on December 15.

Also see

• Queenstown Dec 3-5 - Gondola and Central Business District
• Queenstown Dec 6 - Lord of the Rings Filming Locations Tour
• Queenstown Dec 7 - Extra day in town
• Auckland Dec 8-9 - Arrival and Exploration
• Auckland Dec 10 -  Auckland's Harbor and Newmarket Mall
• Auckland Dec 11 - Rotorua, New Zealand
• Auckland Dec 12 - Auckland Zoo and Horse Races
• Auckland Dec 13 - Hobbiton Movie Set Tour
• Auckland Dec 14-15 - Mission Bay and Achilles Point, then Home
• New Zealand South and North Islands Adventure

Savery Savory Mushrooms Water Tower of Westminster, CO

  

Savery Savory Mushrooms was a real company as this site, but now the only remaining structure is this water tower.  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Dbo8_RvjLfg/?img_index=1

Adventure in Hobbiton

To travel to Hobbiton from Auckland requires a car rental or a tour bus, similar to our previous tour to Rotorua. My choice was the tour bus option. Unfortunately, the drive on the tour bus to Hobbiton was rather annoying due to another passenger who was a know-it-all that disrupted the tour guide's chatter with an endless series of inane questions (apparently, to which this person already knew most of the answers). Besides that, the Hobbiton tour itself was definitely a highlight of our New Zealand trip.

The day of our trip (December 13) was mostly sunny, which offered a spectacular backdrop for the tour. We got to see dozens of Hobbit homes. I love the Hobbit story, and the films, so this was a special treat. Many of the Hobbit homes were sized for forced perspective during filming, while many others were sized at nearly human scale for filming close-up shots with the actors.

We took a lot of photos. In some photos, we appeared slightly larger than a Hobbit would next to their home, but in other shots, we were giants. The Hobbiton tour guide was genuinely entertaining. He bared a striking similarity to David Tenet. 

The amount of detail for each home exterior is amazing. Even more detail was present in the Hobbit home interior that we also toured.

After the Hobbiton tour and return to our transport back to Auckland, we had one additional stop at the reservoir on Waikato River. Unfortunately, the ride back to Auckland was with that same know-it-all, but overall, the adventure was great!

 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Db1JxYTINd3/?img_index=1

Type 8 traversing Notable Stellar Phenomenon

 

Flying my Type 8 through a deep red hued cloud with exobiological lifeforms at a Notable Stellar Phenomena in Elite Dangerous. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Dbo0eirDrAf/?img_index=1

Auckland Zoo too

 

On December 12, Allie and I took mass transit over to Auckland Zoo.  The Zoo has a lot of good exhibits with many animals. It's a small zoo, but well organized.  We got to view lions, tigers, zebras, meerkats, lizards, eels and so many other critters. However, it was disappointing that so many of the exhibits for New Zealand native animals were either closed or had the animals unavailable.

Afterwards, we met up with Allie's cousin again for dinner at Lone Star in Alexandra Park.

Rotorua, New Zealand

Allie's cousin (who has lived in New Zealand most of her life) planned a day trip tour for us to Rotorua on December 11. This required a long three-hour bus ride from Auckland aboard a small tour bus. Along with others on the tour, each person had their own outing scheduled for the day once we arrived in town.

The first tourist to arrive at their destination was at the Māori Cultural Center. Everyone else was dropped off at Wai-O-Tapu Geothermal Park. We had enough time to see most of the geothermal attractions, but not everything. At the designated time, we met at and piled back into the bus. The next stop was back at the cultural center to pick up the one tourist and drop off a bunch of others.

The last tourist, Allie and I were then dropped off at the Polynesian Spa for geothermal baths. Meanwhile, Allie's cousin was taken to a Redwoods Forest Tour.

The geothermal paths were relaxing, but weirdly, the highlight was when Allie and I took our first-ever cool plunges.

Feeling relaxed after 2 hours, the bus picked us up from the spa (we were the last group).  After a short stop at the lake, we headed back to Auckland.

The day was long, so we didn't plan anything for the evening.  

  

 

  

          

Some previous days in New Zealand: December 13, December 10, December 8 and December 4.

Exploring Auckland's Harbor and Newmarket Mall

Due to delayed travel plans, we had to reshuffle several major items on our schedule for our actual arrival in Auckland, NZ. Our Hobbiton Movie Set tour was pushed off to much later in the week. We also moved our harbor cruise to December 10.

First, Allie and I did a little shopping in the morning, confirmed our cruise tickets and then did a little more shopping. We found one tourist shop that was a sister shop to the one we visited in Queenstown, but it had shirts that had good designs and fit. For the first time on our trip, we actually bought some New Zealand themed t-shirts.

Afterwards, we lined up for the harbor cruise and boarded. The trip was a circuit around the Waitemata Harbour augmented with commentary on the various locations, including a bit of New Zealand history, facts about the islands and other interesting places to visit.

 

 

On returning to the CBD, we took a bus to Newmarket to shop at the Westfield Mall. We found some Japanese themed stores with a lot of cute anime items, of which we bought a few. We then found a store full of actual Japanese products, again buying some items that were actually needed during our trip. We also found some good options for dinner at the mall's food court, but chose a great broad noodle dish at a Thai fusion stand.

As the mall was closing, we purchased a couple more needed items from a bookstore, then headed to the bus line to return to the hotel. We did not want to stay out too late anyway since we had to get up early the next morning for a tour planned by Allie's cousin who has been living in New Zealand for most of her life.

Auckland Exploration on Te Ika-a-Māui

After over a full day's delay, we finally landed on North Island of New Zealand in Auckland a bit late in the day on December 8.  After settling in, Allie and I took a running start on December 9 for our exploration of the city.  Sky Tower is within walking distance of our hotel, so we headed over. Sky Tower is tall enough to view everything in Auckland from high-up. Many of the places we will be exploring are clearly visible.

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After getting-the-lay-of-the-land, we explored on foot for while, then had an awesome dinner at Origine Bistro with great food and incredible service.  We had a table that offered a good view of the Harbor too.

 

 

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Due to the delay in arrival, there are a number of places we had to push off or reconsider for another trip in the future. However, the next few days did not disappoint!

Unfortunate Extra Day in Queenstown

 After enjoying a few days in Queenstown and surrounding region, we were excited about travelling to Auckland on December 7, 2026.  We took the morning easy in preparation for our flight to Auckland. Unfortunately, our flight from Queenstown was cancelled due to high winds after we arrived at the airport, and after we checked our bags and went thru security. So we had to retrieve our checked bags and find overnight accommodations. I found a room at the Hilton Queenstown Resort. We were reassigned a flight the next morning.

After we checked-in to the hotel, we took the water taxi to Queenstown CBD for a late lunch at a great seafood restaurant, and some ice cream at a popular shop. We then roamed a bit around the touristy area before returning via water taxi to the hotel for the evening.

At some point during the night, the reassigned flight was also cancelled. We were forced to accept an even later evening flight. In turn, this forced me to start cancelling plans in Auckland, as we were losing a day in town.

Lost Day - December 8, 2026

We didn’t plan for anything in Queenstown on this day, due to it being a lost day. We had breakfast at the hotel cafe, but otherwise relaxed in the hotel room until checkout time.  We finally went to the airport in the afternoon to wait for our early evening flight.

This flight was not cancelled. 

We ultimately landed in Auckland in the evening. After taking our hired towncar to the hotel and checking-in, we settled a bit then went to the hotel cafe for dinner.  Due to our delayed arrival, we had to rearrange plans for our first day in Auckland, and then our first full day!