Postscript

We left Dunedin on Tuesday morning, dropped off by Howard at the airport, then bundled into an airplane for the flight back to Auckland.  Once there, we were re-introduced to big-city life, just another set of bodies to be shuffled from place to place.  We got a shuttle to our airport motel, a non-descript place in a neighborhood 10 or 15 minutes from the terminal.  There we killed time, walking down to a small row of shops and then to another nearby motel for a meal much like any other one would expect in a medium-level chain restaurant.  Not bad, but after the endless string of fine eating experiences on the south Island, somewhat of a letdown…..one’s standards have been raised, don’t you know. 

The next morning we had a day to kill, as a result of Korean Air’s capricious decision to cancel all its outgoing flights (without telling anyone…we learned of it by going on their website just to confirm our schedule) and reschedule them for another day.  We made arrangements for the “Explorer Bus” to pick us up at the motel.  This is a service we learned of from a brochure we picked up at the airport.  A bus picks you up and for a single fee, you get an all day pass.  It and others like it circulate around the city making regular stops every half hour at designated locations designed to take in most of the city’s popular sights.  You can get on and off at any of the stops as often as you want, then at 4:30 pm it takes you back to the motel.  We made our first stop at the Auckland Museum, built in the Auckland Domain (read Park) on top of an extinct (we hope) volcano. The Museum is huge, similar to the Field in Chicago, with three floors of exhibits arranged around a central core.  We stopped at the exhibit called “Hillary’s Axe” to see the axe he’d used to climb Everest and watch a short video which included an interview with the man himself, in his later years, in which he talked about the last few hundred yards to the top.  Brenda had just finished reading a book about an Everest ascent and we’d seen Mt. Cook, where Hillary had practiced….and he’s on the $5 bill down here, so we saw his face every day.  He was modest about his accomplishment, never saying that he and Norgay (whom he gave equal credit) had “conquered” the mountain, but instead that Everest “had relented”.
We took in the Maori cultural performance which featured Maori performers giving us a taste of dances, songs and of course, fighting techniques and the impressive “haka”, the display of potential force and personality that at least in theory could prevent a fight if the other side was suitably impressed.  Later, as part of our ticket, one of the performers gave several of us a guided tour of the Maori hall in the museum, including some background on the exhibits and Maori culture.

(Brenda takes lessons in culture)

I was interested to learn that modern DNA analysis has confirmed the Maori legend that they came originally from the area of Taiwan (where groups with similar features and customs are still found) through India, then Indonesia to Polynesia.  There apparently is a DNA connection with some Native Americans as well.

The Volcano Room (no, not the one in the nightclub) was next.  Being part of a volcanic series, NZ is interested in the subject and Auckland, being built on top of several, is perhaps most keenly interested of all.  The exhibit has a number of explanatory pieces telling us why volcanos form and how, along with some truly impressive film of some expressing themselves in the way only they can..  The final exhibit is in the form of a house one goes in, an ordinary NZ living room, where a TV program is giving news bulletins by the typical talking heads about a pending eruption.  Meanwhile the sliding glass door in the room shows a view overlooking the harbor.  As the news anchor questions whether all this scary stuff from the scientists is really worth evacuating the town and making all this fuss, one can see steam rising from the harbor….and then the water explodes into an eruption, the house you’re in shakes violently and you see the tidal wave and mountain of ash heading straight for the window.  It’s very impressive…..especially since the exhibits outside make the point that it’s not a question of “if” but rather “when” the next eruption will come.  
 
Eyeing the harbor suspiciously, we catch the bus down to Parnell Village, an old part of town that has revitalized itself into a semi-bohemian, semi-upper scale shopping area.  Think Louisville’s Baxter Avenue/Cherokee Park area meets Rodeo Drive.
The bus driver told us that it was one of Bill Clinton’s favorite areas to visit in Auckland, though I doubt Bill takes the same bus we did.  We wandered about for a bit, but didn’t find anything that we wanted that we could afford and/or carry back on the plane, so as usual (for me anyway) we opted to get something to eat.  We chose a café (there are a lot of them to choose from) with an outside patio and (as also is typical) a dangerous range of goodies on offer.  Our server was a 23 year old Auckland native who, upon asking where we were from, wanted to talk sports and the UK Wildcats.  I’m a real disappointment in that regard, never knowing anything about such matters, but he was undeterred.  He talked about rugby, cricket and even a bit about Moto GP.  He asked how we like NZ and when we told him what we’d been doing here, he admitted that he’d never been to the South Island.  He seemed puzzled just a bit when we told him how wonderful we thought his country was, since as he put it, “It’s just home”.
 
By now we’d used up most of our time and we needed to get back to our room to get sorted out for the long flight home, so we just stayed on the bus for a drive through tour of Auckland, a city of one and a half million people (who may end up somewhere else if that darn volcano blows….) doing the sorts of things folks in big cities do all around us.  There was heavy traffic, lots of construction going on everywhere, more scooters and bicycles on the roads than motorcycles and I didn’t think riding here would be much fun at all. 
 
It’s April 2nd and it will be for about two days by the time we get back.  We left Auckland at 10:10 am on Thursday the 2nd, we’ll arrive in Seoul Korea at 6:00 pm on April 2nd after 12 hours in the air, stay there for two hours and then arrive in Los Angeles California at 3pm, still on April 2nd, after another 13 hour flight.  One night in LA, then arrive in Lexington at 8pm on the 3rd.  I may eventually get all that straightened out, but don’t count on it. Don’t ask me what day it is for a while.