Sunday 8th April 2018.
Sunday, we should have been leaving for Fiji this morning but, instead, we are repacking for our move to the M Social Hotel. We checked out of the Sebel Hotel and walked our luggage down the street and around the corner to the M Social Hotel where we checked in and left our baggage as our room was not ready.
Then it was back to pick up the car and drive to the Go Rental office on Beach Street in the Parnell section of the city.
We dropped the car off successfully but were a little concerned to learn that they would charge us for the repair of the flat tire we had on our way to Auckland. We have a smallish excess on our insurance for the car so it will come out of that and hopefully it will not be too much.
The Toyota Corolla had taken us 2,343 kms or 1,456 incredible miles from when we rented it at Queenstown. With the exception of the flat tire, it had performed very well and was comfortable and agile on the twisty roads of South Island.
Having left the car, we decided to walk to the Auckland Art Museum which involved some quite steep climbs up to Albert Park. On the way we encountered a small coffee shop called 'Scarecrow' which served us up a breakfast and coffee and refueled us for the last climb. We arrived at the Museum which is part new building and part old building and the two are very well integrated. Much of the collection is very modern art but there are also a couple of 'Old Masters' and some wonderful Maori portraits by an artist called, Charles F Goldie. These were portraits of Maori chiefs and generally older people which were extremely evocative. There was some unusual and interesting sculpture.
We left the museum and took the Inner Lop bus to the War Memorial Museum which is high up on the hill overlooking the city. This museum which also incorporates a modern and an older part has a number of sections. It does have a wonderful collection of Polynesian artifacts and gives a view of each of the Pacific Island groups such as Tonga, Samoa, Kiribati, Cook Islands, etc. All these islands have different cultures with some common elements. The amazing migration of the peoples from Asia to populate the Southern and Central Pacific region is fascinating and amazing and I will write much more about this later.
The prodigious navigating capabilities of these people are legendary. One of these navigating techniques was to observe the clouds. According to Māori, the first explorer to reach New Zealand was Kupe. Using the stars and ocean currents as his navigational guides, he ventured across the Pacific on his waka hourua (voyaging canoe) from his ancestral Polynesian homeland of Hawaiki. It is thought that Kupe made landfall at the in Hokianga Harbour in Northland, around 1000 years ago. It is said that someone in the canoe called out in Maori "A cloud, a cloud, a long white cloud" on sighting the islands.
The Maori word for New Zealand is Aotearoa
The word can be broken up as: ao = cloud, dawn, daytime or world, tea = white, clear or bright and roa = long. It can also be broken up as Aotea = the name of one of the migratory waka that traveled to New Zealand, or the Large Magellanic Cloud, and roa = long. The common translation is "the land of the long white cloud".
Of course, anthropologists have had to undermine these wonderful myths but the timing and manner of the arrival of the first settlers of New Zealand are mainly true.
After a refreshing cup of coffee we took a cab back to the M Social where we found a lovely room overlooking Auckland Harbor.
We had a reservation at a restaurant called Soul in the evening and we had a very good fish meal there of Chowder, crudo, snapper and haduku which is a local fish. We both left the restaurant rather full and were soon asleep after the short walk back to the hotel.
Then it was back to pick up the car and drive to the Go Rental office on Beach Street in the Parnell section of the city.
We dropped the car off successfully but were a little concerned to learn that they would charge us for the repair of the flat tire we had on our way to Auckland. We have a smallish excess on our insurance for the car so it will come out of that and hopefully it will not be too much.
The Toyota Corolla had taken us 2,343 kms or 1,456 incredible miles from when we rented it at Queenstown. With the exception of the flat tire, it had performed very well and was comfortable and agile on the twisty roads of South Island.
Having left the car, we decided to walk to the Auckland Art Museum which involved some quite steep climbs up to Albert Park. On the way we encountered a small coffee shop called 'Scarecrow' which served us up a breakfast and coffee and refueled us for the last climb. We arrived at the Museum which is part new building and part old building and the two are very well integrated. Much of the collection is very modern art but there are also a couple of 'Old Masters' and some wonderful Maori portraits by an artist called, Charles F Goldie. These were portraits of Maori chiefs and generally older people which were extremely evocative. There was some unusual and interesting sculpture.
We left the museum and took the Inner Lop bus to the War Memorial Museum which is high up on the hill overlooking the city. This museum which also incorporates a modern and an older part has a number of sections. It does have a wonderful collection of Polynesian artifacts and gives a view of each of the Pacific Island groups such as Tonga, Samoa, Kiribati, Cook Islands, etc. All these islands have different cultures with some common elements. The amazing migration of the peoples from Asia to populate the Southern and Central Pacific region is fascinating and amazing and I will write much more about this later.
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| The migratory tracks across the Pacific and the population of Polynesia. The peoples originated from Asia and there are DNA similarities between Maori and Taiwanese people |
The Maori word for New Zealand is Aotearoa
The word can be broken up as: ao = cloud, dawn, daytime or world, tea = white, clear or bright and roa = long. It can also be broken up as Aotea = the name of one of the migratory waka that traveled to New Zealand, or the Large Magellanic Cloud, and roa = long. The common translation is "the land of the long white cloud".
Of course, anthropologists have had to undermine these wonderful myths but the timing and manner of the arrival of the first settlers of New Zealand are mainly true.
After a refreshing cup of coffee we took a cab back to the M Social where we found a lovely room overlooking Auckland Harbor.
We had a reservation at a restaurant called Soul in the evening and we had a very good fish meal there of Chowder, crudo, snapper and haduku which is a local fish. We both left the restaurant rather full and were soon asleep after the short walk back to the hotel.
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