The Joy of Being Stranded

Saturday, July 7^th, 2012

Our flight from the United States landed in Auckland on time. Then things slowed down. We missed our flight to Dunedin because of the time spent waiting in line at immigration and customs, and of course there was not another flight to take until the next day.  Dr. Goswami and Dr. Reiser-Robbins were able to make arrangements pretty quickly and efficiently.  We went to a great cottage style hotel near the airport with amazing hospitality and service. We took some cabs into Auckland and spent the rest of the day there. We visited the Auckland War Memorial Museum which was fantastic. Beautiful architecture, lots of Maori and natural history collections. We walked towards the water and Dr. Goswami bought us all kebabs from a small restaurant in the Auckland University district. They were delicious. We continued on towards the water and passed an old cemetery from the 1800s. The old headstones and monuments were beautiful. The bridge we crossed went right over part of it with the graves still visible underneath. As we walked through the downtown area I was impressed with the cleanliness of the city and the amount of public restrooms with were also very clean and well maintained. We broke up into separate groups about this point. Mark, Lissy, Adrianna, and I (Katharine) wanted to see the water and walked that way. We found it after a few blocks and saw the old Ferry Building which is big, beautiful, and now a museum. We did not have time to go in but we were able to hop a ferry and cross the channel to Davenport. Our goal was to climb to the top of Mt. Victoria, a small inactive volcano, but we never found it. We did however walk along a great beach with black volcano rocks all along it. The houses and sail boats reminded me of a small sea side village. As it got colder, winder, and darker we decided to stop and ask for directions. We went into the Masonic Hotel & Tavern and asked one of the men working there where the volcano was. He laughed at us and said there was not really anything there so we decided to take a break and go back to catch the ferry back to the mainland. While waiting for the ferry Dr. Rieser-Robbins caught up with us. She apparently had better directions then us and found her way up to the top of Mt. Victoria. We rode the ferry back together and met up with everyone at Harrah’s Sky City, a broadcasting and communications facility and the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere. We grabbed something to eat and went back to the hotel and went right to sleep about 9pm. We got a great night’s sleep and Kelsey, Dr. Goswami, and I (Katharine) went for an early morning walk about 7am. It was frosty and cold but fun. We packed up and ate breakfast together at the hotel and headed to the air port to finally finish our journey to Dunedin. Even though it was not in the plan and it set us back a day we adapted, had several adventures, lots of laughs, and made some great memories. We were all happy to have been stranded in Auckland!


-Katharine K.