Day 17: Auckland briefly, jumbo jet longly

We have returned to our native soil now. Currently I am drinking some tea, taking some sleepy vitamins and steeling myself for my return to work in the morning. Everything about the return was pretty uneventful. It was a long flight from Auckland to LA but not as long as LA to Melbourne was. Neither one of us got much sleep so a lot of movies were watched on the in flight monitors. I think I watched Angels and Demons, Adventureland, and something else but I don’t recall what. I may have been awake but I doubt I was coherent. Customs in LA was a breeze. I guess the trick is to declare anything that you possibly can and then the customs agents won’t feel the need to invade you. We also had pretty good train karma coming back from the airport with only one snafu at the Lawrence St. station which was closed for the weekend. Fortunately that only ended up being a two block detour to the 2,3 train that took us to Atlantic.

Auckland this morning – way way way back this morning was surprisingly nice. Most people say they find it bland and I suppose it was, but it was bland in a rather comforting way. We didn’t see much, just puttered around in Wendell through the downtown area and then up to Mt. Eden for a view of the city. Mt. Eden is actually a dormant or extinct volcano, I don’t recall at this point, but you can drive to the top and they have a nice path walking around the rim. No going down into the crater though as they had signs warning against it saying that the ecosystem was very fragile. We obeyed but it would have been cool to go stand at the bottom of a volcano crater.

From the rim of Mt. Eden you can see a 360 degree panorama of Auckland and it’s obvious that the area was once a hotbed of tectonic activity. You can see the volcanic cones rising all over the place. We counted at least ten but the guidebooks say there are many more. It was a very interesting landscape and much different than the general mountainous-ness of Wellington and the rest of what we saw of New Zealand.

From here we drove to Auckland airport, dropped off Wendell the rental, and got situated for our long flight. Thus concludes our honeymoon. We had an awesome time, had so much fun, and made so many great memories. It was fun to write up these entries each night and we hope you all enjoyed reading along. Until next time. . . .