Old Zwiers in New Zealand

Hello Everybody! Here's the latest from the Zwiers in Auckland. Hope all is well with everyone back home.

March 23

We departed Los Angeles at 8:30pm on Saturday, March 21 and arrived on time in Auckland at 5:10 am on Monday, March 23. In retrospect we should not have been so surprised to see free coffee and tea offered in the baggage claim area of Auckland International. New Zealand seems as tourist-friendly as we Yanks would want but they need a better publicist. It was a bit of a bumpy flight but we slept well and long, and we felt no need to nap on arrival.

After breakfast we walked downhill from the dormant volcanic cone on which the Hyatt Regency is built to the dormant volcanic cone on which the Auckland War Memorial Museum is built. The Museum should more accurately be named the Auckland War Memorial and Museum. It was commissioned firstly as a Memorial to the New Zealanders who died in overseas wars, but at the same time was constructed to house the Auckland Museum. A major portion of the museum is devoted to the indigenous Maori people and their culture. The Maori did not know metal prior to European visitors, and must not have found suitable clay for pottery. The exhibits demonstrate the sophistication they achieved in the use of wood especially, and other organic materials, to make everything from boats to bowls. Elaborate carvings depicted genealogy and the achievements of their ancestors on lintel-pieces, walls of communal houses, and stern pieces of canoes.
Our docent John pointed out a carving of the Madonna with Child created by an artisan who converted to Christianity. The missionaries were not keen on the application of Maori style to Christian icons. The Maori were a warrior people and used sharks’ teeth in clever ways to make some of their weapons.

The Museum had many excellent exhibits on the natural history of New Zealand. We knew that the islands are at the boundary of the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates, but we did not know that in the north the Australian plate is overriding the Pacific plate, while in the south the opposite is taking place: the Pacific plate is overriding the Australian plate. Auckland is built upon more than 40 dormant volcanic cones and calderas. Dormant, but not extinct, the exhibits stressed. One chillingly depicted the resurgence of volcanism in Waitemata Harbour, which we can see from our room.

From the Museum we walked back to the downtown area to enjoy a dinner of grilled local seafood at a restaurant on the harbor and were afterward suitably tired to call it an evening early.

March 24

At mid-morning we headed for a tourist attraction called Kelly Tarlton’s Antarctic Encounter and Underwater World. It was a bit too far away to walk, and our cab driver offered to return to pick us up in an hour, assuring us that if we’ve been to Sea World we would be through this exhibit in about half an hour. We told the driver to return in two hours, and he was skeptical but compliant. What he didn’t take into account was the attraction to Tom of the partial reconstruction of the hut Scott and his men built on Cape Evans in McMurdo Sound. Tom enabled his “bipolar disorder” – an obsessive fascination with the areas around 90 degrees north and south latitudes and all things pertaining thereto --for a full hour in this part alone, studying the detail of the reproduced artifacts from reindeer-pelt sleeping bags to canned and bottled foodstuffs. If the reproductions are accurate it’s a wonder why Griffith McAllister is not a global brand. They provided Bacon Rations, Potted Veal, Tapioca, Semolina, and Beef Marrow Fat. Sunlight Soap and Dettol Antiseptic are still on the shelves in Auckland’s Foodtown Supermarket, in addition to Kelly Tarlton’s.
Another aspect of the Antarctic Encounter was an indoor (of course) breeding collection of Gentoo and Emperor penguins, which we could study and photograph from the warmth and much better aroma of a SnoCat ride. The Underwater World was a Plexiglas tunnel through an aquarium containing rays and sharks from New Zealand waters, as well as two of the fish species which contributed to Monday’s dinner. Walk-through aquariums can be found in Sydney and Singapore, among other places, but Kelly Tarlton’s claim theirs was the first and the model for the others. There were other traditional aquariums for smaller creatures like puffer fish, seahorses, and New Zealand ocean crayfish more than 2 feet long.

It is early autumn in the Southern Hemisphere and we have been blessed with beautiful weather: clear skies, light breezes, and temperatures in the low 70’s. Tomorrow we begin our tours of the North and South Islands by bus, train, and ferry.