Day 19 And so, after a week, our last full day in Auckland is here. We head into town reasonably early with the intent on revisiting some areas, catching up on shopping and taking those last few pictures of this amazing City. Once again, the bus drops us at the Harbour, and until we leave the city later this evening, we will be on foot, we are in agreement that this is the best way to get around without missing anything. Rugby will play a part in the day, ...

Day 18 I feel slightly guilty about how we spent the first part of the day today...we did nothing during the day! We relaxed around the motel in Northcote, wandered down to the supermarket and then relaxed some more, and it was lovely! After 17 packed days, it was nice to take an afternoon off and recharge, to regain the energy that we would need for the final week of the tour, and it felt good. It wasn't to be a full day off though, we still had the minor...

Day 17 Today we head up a volcano. We have tickets booked for the Volcanic Explorer Tour, which involves a ferry crossing from the Harbour over to Mount Rangitoto, and then a tractor pulled train towards the summit of this 600 year old volcano, where we will have the opportunity to look around in our own time for a bit before decent. The crossing is smooth, it's a beautiful sunny day and very warm, even up top on the ferry, the breeze isn't too fresh. It take...

Day 16 We start out this morning by catching what has become our regular bus service from Northcote into Auckland. First on the itinerary today is a harbour cruise, which we have booked for 1030 The bus arrives at the Harbour at just before 1000, so we pick up our tickets, and grab a coffee before joining the boat for our tour. The tour is scheduled to take 90 minutes and starts out on time, and is pretty full on the top deck as we depart on our tour. We he...

Day 15 Today is the day where we start planning what we want to see while we are in Auckland. We head into the city by bus nice and early and go straight to the visitors centre at the harbour and start grabbing leaflets. We know that we want to do the Sky Tower, and decide that there is no better time to do it that now, so make our way up Queen Street and across to the Tower. $28 gives us access to the main observation deck at 610 feet up, and to the Sky Deck...