We are survivors!

 We are Survivors! The Sydney security line for Auckland departure 2HOURS! Auckland arrivals security queue - 1 hour. Couldn’t take any pictures- security would have hauled us in! Patience is a virtue flying through these countries!

We have been riding the bus or walking here in Aukland - our bus driver said we were the first foreigners he'd talked to from the US since before COVID.

Day 1 we hiked to the top of town and then followed the Lonely Planet walking tour back towards our hotel. Auckland has many parks and is really quite lovely. We stopped at the Art Museum then walked through the Albert Park with the Victoria and Albert statues and remarked that we should tell our grandkids to take a semester or a year here at Auckland's University which circles around the park area. We got sidetracked however when we reached Vulcan Lane and needing a rest succumbed to the siren call of pubs and beer. Vulcan Lane used to be the hangout of prostitutes and sailors we were told by the barkeep.

The next day we visited the Aukland Museum - or Aukland War Museum via bus. Aukland is just too hilly, and it was a bit of a hike. The museum has much of the history of New Zealand and many Māori artifacts. They also have a cultural show we paid to see. It was good... but truthfully, not as good as the one at the Waitangi Treaty grounds, but we wouldn't know that till the next day.

We'll return to Auckland at the end of our OAT trip, and hopefully visit the tower and go out to Devonport, an old Victorian suburb the book says to see.

Larry's clamoring for his computer, so I'll add pictures later when I can upload them. Hope all is well with you my friends!

                 The Antipodes - A Brief Ancient History

In ancient times, explorers traveled from place to place far from their home looking for new wealth and treasure. Some of them claimed that the earth was flat as they moved around. However, Greek astronomers, later on, concluded that the world is spherical with southern and northern hemispheres.

In 150 AD, a mapmaker and Greek astronomer, Claudius Ptolemy, came up with the idea that the earth is kept balanced by the unknown land in the south. He then drew an imaginary land that represented the unknown land on the map. Over this time, it was referred to as the unknown land in the south. The Antipodes.

During this century, Europeans were certain about this land in the south, but they were yet to figure out how to get there. In 1570, a map was drawn with a vast imaginary land mass located in the south that was proportional to the land on the top of the earth. For about 200 years, European explorers searched for this unknown southern land. Some of them sailed past it while others bumped into it, but they didn't realize as thy expected a lot of wealth to be in this fabled land.

While explorers from Europe still searched for the unknown land, Aborigines had already settled there. The Aborigines were the first people to settle in Australia. They are thought to have arrived on the continent 50,000 years ago. Aborigines' ancestors are believed to have left Africa 60,000 years ago and have wandered through Asia before they stumbled in the ocean between Australia and the other continents. Since there is no evidence of boats and canoes, it is still uncertain how they crossed to Australia.

Meanwhile, in New Zealand the Māori originated with settlers from East Polynesia, who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of canoe voyages between roughly 1320 and 1350. Over several centuries in isolation, these settlers developed their own distinctive culture, whose language, mythology, crafts, and performing arts evolved independently from those of other eastern Polynesian cultures. Some early Māori moved to the Chatham Islands where their descendants became New Zealand's other indigenous Polynesian ethnic group, the Moriari.

                                We are off for the Antipodes!

(Australia and New Zealand and Tasmania.)  

Our first crisis is Larry can’t take his Pay Days with him.  Rumor has it New Zealand will confiscate them and have even fined previous OAT tour members $400 for not declaring them in their luggage. Now that’s serious business!  However, this isn’t nearly so bad as the first explorers who found themselves attacked and eaten … the Maoris didn’t like interlopers.

It is also amazing that the first explorers looking for the fabled continent (Australia) managed to sail right through the Tasman Sea and not even realize Australia was there landing in New Zealand instead! 

“In their search for the vast ‘terra australis incognita’ (the unknown southern land) thought to lie in the Pacific, explorers made daring journeys across uncharted waters.

They did not find the fabled continent, but they did find New Zealand. First sighted by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, the country was later mapped by James Cook, the British seafarer who dominates the story of the European discovery of New Zealand.”

I expect you won’t hear from us for several days; we leave October 19th and cross the International Date Line and then after 15 hours and 20 minutes then another 4 hours to Auckland we’ll be zonkered.  But I do hope to keep up to date as much as I can on our journey and even add pictures if I figure out how.