Jan. 7th Auckland – last night in NZ

Hello again from NZ – for the last time! We are just packing up and then heading to sleep before going to the airport in the morning. This week on the North Island has been very rushed, unlike our sometimes lazy days in the South.
We ventured further into Auckland today, found new running shoes for Quinn (his old ones were rotten and starting to smell so bad I made him leave them outside last night!), dropped off some films for developing and then went back to “touristing”. We went to Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater Adventure. This is an aquarium and antarctic experience that we really enjoyed. In the Antarctic area, they have a very large and seemingly quite well run penguin “pen” with 2 kinds of penguin: the King and the Gentoo. They produce something like 2000 thousand tonnes of snow a day to keep these penguins feeling like they are in the arctic – perhaps their staff could all get hired at our ski hills making snow! After watching the penguins play for a while, we entered a replica of Scott’s hut – Scott was one of the first explorers in the Antartic and his hut is still there, and Scott base is still the NZ base for antartcic operations and research. It was fascinating to see their living conditions and to learn of the hardships these men endured. Our Canadian winters are nothing in comparison. We then boarded a snowcat – think Bombardier, just like we have at home – and took a tour around the peguin habitat. We all got a real chuckle out of the way many of the birds actually seem to pose for us tourists!
We moved from the Antartic to the oceans surrounding NZ, taking a moving walkway through a tunnel made of clear palstic – you could see all of the creatures swimming all around and over you – very cool. We saw sharks, stingrays, lots of fishes and huge tuna! One of those must fill a lot of tuna cans!
It continued to be a rainy, although warm, day in Auckland, so we headed for the movies. Not something we would normally do on holidays, but once again, Lord of the Rings was the driving motivation.Quinn was really counting on seeing The Return of the King IN New Zealand, so he and Ian went off to that, while Dyl and I saw “Elf” and then poked around a few stores. Auckland downtown really does shut down at 5 or 6,, so not much to do!
As I said, we are back at the hotel, packing and organising – a big job after 4 weeks!
Our flight leaves at 12:45, so any of you who know Ian’s obsession with being early for planes know we will be out of here well before 10!
I hope to find internet service easily in Waikiki, but if not, will get in touch and update as soon as we get back to Canada. I am hearing that is very cold there, so am glad I bought myself a pair of sheepskin boots!