The final in New Zealand: Auckland

The last stage has now been reached. For Auckland - a beautiful and special city - we only had 2 days left, of which we still 'used' one day in Rotorua due to our planning error. We didn't manage to visit the outer districts with their many small volcanoes this time, but we already know Auckland a little bit ...

Our great enthusiasm for sightseeing had also decreased a bit. On our only remaining day in Auckland, we first went to 'Kelly Tarlton's', an aquarium that has now turned into SeaLife and had king (and donkey) penguins. We realized that we might have to go to Antarctica again soon, to be more precise: to South Georgia...

We let the rest of the day drift by in Auckland and visited a few souvenir shops, and of course the Sky Tower (TV tower). The city was far from being as bustling as on previous visits, and the buildings looked a bit neglected. There was a lot of construction going on and - maybe because of that - it was quite dirty in some corners. Overall, it matched our mood ... a bit wistful and focused on saying goodbye. We ended the day in Auckland with one of the almost obligatory visits to a combination of a restaurant and brewery, where you can always try out some varieties of locally brewed beer (and ciders) ...

But we didn't want to leave without seeing the volcanoes in the city area, so on our way to the airport (or rather to return the car) we made a detour to Mount Eden. Thanks to a construction site, we had to walk a few hundred meters, which was no problem uphill, but on the way down we got caught in the rain. So the weather almost kicked us out of the country ... we actually wanted to go to One Tree Hill as well, but we skipped that - the thought of boarding the flight home completely soaked didn't seem so appealing to us ...