Well, the love is back: my blog is back on the approved list.You know, maybe travelpod.com ought to apply their spam-checking algorithms against Hillary and Donald’s blogs and see if they get shut down too.

First today’s bad news: We didn’t come across a new single historical, cultural, political, anthropological, psychosocial or geological factoid to enliven today’s blog entry. We’ll just have to go with the story of today’s activities for this entry. Maybe one or two snapshots. Let’s al hope for better pickings tomorrow.

What we did today was to take a 35 minute ferry ride to Waiheke Island, a 1.5 hour bus tour, a three hour hike through a heavily forested wildlife preserve, stopped for lunch at the Stoney Mountain vineyard (food but no wine: too expensive!) and came back across for a nice supper at the top of the Sky Tower here in downtown Auckland. Judy’s Garmin recorded 18,450 steps,43 flights of stares and 8.67 miles. I shot almost 300 pictures so all in all not a bad day’s work. Garmin also recorded 2,015 calories burned but don’t worry, intake exceeded output by a significant margin as I’ll discuss in a minute.

Briefly, the story of Waiheke is:

– Erupted from volcanic activity quite some time ago, although nearby Rangitoto came into being 600 years ago. New Zealand is an active geothermal area for sure.

– Polynesian sailors arrived in New Zealand about 900 years ago. They discovered the island and named it Motu-Wai-Heke, “island of trickling waters”, a spiritual site for the Maoris.

– The Brits came and set up shop in the 18th and especially the 19th centuries, driving off the Maoris through sickness and war and mangling the perfectly good Maroi name into Waiheke.

– Waiheke became a quiet part of greater Auckland. Ferry service started in 1930 but otherwise a pretty quiet place.

– Hippies populated Waiheke in the 1970s.

– Lately it has become a playground for the rich and famous. Median home prices hover around $1 million.

– You would be hard pressed to find a good location for a pool table. It’s hilly everywhere except on its more than 100 beaches.

So a pretty unremarkable story. It’s actually the story of a whole bunch of places on our planet:
Geological upheaval; indigenous populations discover the place; Europeans rediscovers the place, take the land and kill of most of the indigenous people; Hippies come and smoke a pipe of peace, love and all the rest; The rich and famous rediscover the place and build mega-mansions and drive property values through the roof. Ho, hum. Another story of Imperialism gone bad.

But I was supposed to save this stuff for tomorrow. Sorry.

The trip on the ferry was fun: a sunny day with great views of Auckland as we left port. Then a really fun hike through the heavily forested nature preserves near the town of Onetangi. I’ll let the pictures do the talking. The trip home was cold and windy, which gave us the excuse for a nice quick nap inside, rocked to sleep by the gentle swells. It was a much needed nap since having gone to bed at 10 last night Judy awoke at 2 and I at 5 so were just a bit jet lacked and sleep deprived at this point.

I’m sorry to say this big bird shooter pretty much struck out in the woods today. It was maddening. One beautiful, exotic sounding bird after another close by but hidden high in the branches of a tall, dense tree. All I got were a few shots of shore birds that would just as soon grab the sandwich out of your hand as anything else.

Dinner tonight was at the top of the 300-odd-foot Sky Tower in the heart of downtown and about six blocks from our hotel. It has a revolving dining room on the 52nd floor. Really nice gourmet dinner. The only catch as that each person is required to order NZ$40 of food, a target we greatly exceeded. Actually it was a pretty good deal because the dinner reservations gave us tickets for the ride up, normally $28 per person. So dinner, after subtracting $26 from $40 and converting to US$, came closer to US$10. You can hardly eat at McDonalds for that anymore.

Speaking of dining, so far we’ve had Malaysian, French, Italian, Museum and Bagel Shop food. But sooner or later we’ll tuck into a big, gnarly, cured-on-the-hoof shank of sheep. We’ll let you know how that comes out.

So now it’s on to the next phase of the adventure: the rental car. Think “Left, Left, Left” for us tomorrow. We’re off to Hobbitton and Rotorua.