At 8:15 we wave good-bye to Stuart, the friendly owner of the Pahia Pacific Resort Hotel and make our way back towards Auckland. Our group of 8 will meet the remaining six who will join us for the rest of the tour to Rotorua and then to the South Island.
It's a gorgeous sunny day, but the ground is wet from more rain last night. Still a shock to see cars coming round a bend towards us in the right hand lane! We stop in Whangerei, at the Honey Center. NZ is famous for the health benefits of Manuka honey (bees eating from the medicinal manuka plant).
We arrive in Auckland around noon and I have just enough time to grab some tomato bisque (sorry, no photo of tomato bisque, lol) before four of us catch the "shark" shuttle for the Kelly Tarlton Antarctic Underwater World.
Amazing to see live penguins and their brown furry babies (these are for real, not stuffed models)!
stingrays and sharks swim by in the long tunnel tanks
There were also authentic displays of the living environment of the Antarctic explorers of the early 1900s .
and hermit crab the size of my fist!
poisonous lionfish...
even a scuba diver feeding them
Windows in facility's cafetaria actually had bay water breaking on the glass.
After meeting and greeting the new members of the group, we head out for dinner at Neptune's Restaurant on the waterfront. I ordered Surf and Turf over sweet potato...
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