It was time to say goodbye to New Zealand, as we returned to Auckland, our starting point of this trip. Last minute souvenir shopping and a special Christmas dinner on top of the Sky Tower was a wonderful way to conclude the adventure.
Itinerary of the day: Hahei → Miranda Shorebirds Centre → Novotel (Auckland Airport) → Mt.Eden → Sky Tower → Depart next day
As the weather forecast of yesterday predicted, the rain came down pretty hard this morning. I could have done the crazy thing of rolling about Hahei beach all by myself in the rain, but the idea of sleeping in sounded more appealing.
The road on the eastern Coromandel Peninsula was fairly easy to drive, so the vapor didn't bother us too much. The radio played mostly Christmas music, and we did notice that the songs tend to not talk about snow.
We stopped by the Miranda Shorebirds Centre along the way, since we didn't have anything better to do. The centre was closed for Christmas, but the bird-watching track was open. The main shorebirds observed here is wrybill (ngutuparore), but several other shorebirds like plovers, stilts and gulls could be found as well! Their website has a complete list of the bird species.
The track was 30 minutes each way, and it would become longer and longer every year because of the changing shorelines and invading mangroves. The best time to catch the shorebirds would be two hours on each side of low tide.
The dense bush of mangroves in the photo used to be open water where the shorebirds would gather.
Overall, not a very interesting walk. We saw a few welcome swallows on the way, but most of the time it was grass on the right and mangroves on the left.
This was as close as we got to the wrybills and as far as my tele lens could reach. I could see there were some chicks with the adults.
Our bird viewing was interrupted as rain started to come down and off went all the wrybills, and we had to turn back. This was not the best birding experience, but could be a lot better with better binoculars and lenses.
We hit the roads again and 40 minutes later, we arrived at our lodging for the night, Novotel Auckland Airport. This hotel was newly built, and might very well be the closest hotel to the airport ever, located right across from international departure! Our flight tomorrow was very early in the morning (8:30am), and I simply did not want to deal transport after we returned our rental car.
I never liked chain hotels because of their teeny tiny rooms, but didn't mind their modern decor. At 295NZD per night, this was the most expensive room we stayed at, but that's what we had to pay for convenience.
Most of the time I wasn't bothered by the sucky wifi in NZ, but not today. Novotel did not have free wifi in the room, so I had to do our online flight check-ins in the lobby with our mobile devices. The free wifi in the lobby was only valid for 30 minutes on each device (which seemed so stingy considering the room rate?!). The inefficient online check-in process for Cathay Pacific took me 45 minutes to do, so I had use both my iPhone and my dad's iPad to complete all three of our check-ins. There were two iMacs in the lobby which I could use to do check-ins faster, but two STUPID ASS girls were using STUPID ASS FACEBOOK for the entire 45 minutes I was in the lobby! Why didn't Novotel enforce a time limit on those, huh?!
We didn't have to return our rental car until 10pm, so we visited Mt.Eden in Auckland. It was a bit redundant to visit after we had already done One Tree Hill, but something to keep us busy before dinner.
Auckland is built on a volcanic field with 53 volcanoes, and Mt.Eden is one of them. Hard to imagine with the grassy crater it has now, the last eruption was 28,000 years ago.
On Christmas Day, Auckland is a dead city. So dead that driving in it was a piece of cake! In the photo was a bungy device (the yellow and aqua pillars, attached to some kind of a seated compartment). No seriously how much do Kiwis love adrenalin?
Having said that, we could always count on the Asian-operated souvenir shops to be open. Just like in Canada!
In addition to the possum nipple warmers I saw at Lake Tekapo, I found more creations of this line of products - possum g-string and possum willy warmers! I would really like to meet the genius mind behind this...
We shopped until it was about time for our reservation, then returned to CN Tower Sky Tower. Sky Tower, along with the restaurants, hotel and shops within it, were collectively called SKYCITY. The revolving restaurant I booked was the Orbit.
With a reservation at the revolving restaurant, we got complimentary access to the observation deck. Glass floors are my guilty pleasure. (excuse my bright coloured socks, they were emergency merino socks I bought after my flats were hurting my feet)
Hmm...let's just say the Auckland aerial view wasn't my cup of tea.
Christmas dinner at the orbit was by reservation only, with a special 3-course menu different from their usual. Don't ask me what the price was, let's just say it coincided with tower standard! I never dined on a revolving restaurant before though, not even in my own city, so I figured it would be nice to at least do it once.
Each table was provided with one Christmas cracker for each guest. Each cracker had a small piece of papers with some jokes written on them, a festive paper hat, and a small gift inside them! Our gifts were a travel toiletries set, except they were all for cosmetics, which none of us use.
Each of the appetizer, main and dessert had three choices, so my parents and I each simply chose different ones to sample the variety of the menu.
First of the appetizers, the Roast salmon. We had plenty of "Akaroa salmon" at Akaroa itself, but I couldn't resist anything saffron. The caper and dill salad was excellent.
Goat cheese and sumac pie. I loved the fig jelly!
Our favourite of the appetizers was the Crystal Bay prawns. The star was not the shrimps, as fresh and plump as they were, but the pumpkin gnocchi. Got no idea what the chef did, but the gnocchi was also bursting with shrimp flavours!
I had to try not to look at the ground to keep from getting dizzy from the revolving floors. I wasn't crazy about Auckland's aerial view, but this particular angle was not bad at all.
Onto the mains. This duck leg confit was very different flavour from the one we had at VKnow, Queenstown, so couldn't judge which one was better. This one had a very strong siu mei influence, as opposed to the broiled one at VKnow. 台灣人的話，我說味道像東山鴨頭有沒有人相信？
Market Fish, which for the day was a snapper. Freshest fish we had throughout the whole trip, and the risotto was amazing.
Turkey, made in the form of roll and stuffing. The turkey was a bit dry, but probably the lightest dish of the bunch.
Between the mains and the dessert, Santa came out from nowhere and started greeting all the guests! He talked specifically to the kids, so cute.
By the time the desserts were on, we were about 90% full. I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but still sad that I couldn't finish most of the desserts.
Hakanoa ginger beer creme brulee, my favourite one out of the three options (most likely because it was the least sweet). The ice cream was hockey pokey flavoured!
Valrhona Jivara chocolate delight. Valrhona is a brand of luxury chocolate manufacturer in France. Jivara is chocolate with 40% cocoa with some malt, to create a velvety smooth texture, which I do not ever want on chocolate. Loved the yogurt sorbet and the crunch bar though.
Christmas cake, with Brandy custard and rum raisin ice cream. Good thing we left this for last and didn't finish it because it was too rich an sweet for our taste.
My parents were devastated when I told them the price of this dinner, but were happy with the food after the fact. This would be an unforgettable Christmas which we'll refer to as "the very expensive one on the tower but omg the food was so good".
Return of rental car to Avis was so painless, I might have recovered a bit from all the traumatic experiences I've had in Canada. No emails and phone calls three months later to ask for "cleaning fees" or shit like that.
As seen in the photo, Novotel was within walking distance from all the car rentals.
The next morning, we simply walked across a street to catch our flight. Most stress-free trip to the airport in my life, ever.
We would return to Taiwan the same way we came, with one transfer in Hong Kong. Believe it or not, this photo was of Auckland airport, not HK airport, with all the Simplified Chinese commercials and signs and whatnot. Reminded me of Vancouver airport...
Goodbye New Zealand, goodbye Aotearoa!
We had an ok experience with Cathay Pacific overall. Great entertainment system and service, slightly better-than-average food (on international flights) and horrendous online check-in.
I could watch my favourite Taiwanese travel show on a HK airlines, who would've thought?
The second inflight meal had tub of ice cream from New Zealand Natural, Hokey pokey flavour, too! I was so sad that this might be the last chance for me to taste NZ's amazing ice creams.
HK airport is a big airport with plenty of shopping, diorama display of HK culture, and free unlimited wifi.
Switched to the smaller, less luxurious plane to Taipei.
The same disgusting fried rice and tea like the ones we had on the arriving flight, with a slight difference of a Christmas themed biscuit snack in silver packaging.
Back on the other side of the equator, to the long, boring winter. Taiwan was hit with an unusual cold storm at the time, with temperatures dropping to a whopping 14°C. Wow such cold, I am scared!? (It was -30°C when I landed in Canada four days later, and all I got was a spring jacket)
Not just missing the mild weather, upon seeing this vending machine at TPE, I missed the driving days in NZ as well!
Everything that happened in NZ felt like a dream. My memories didn't became more vivid until I started writing this trip report.
A few months before we departed, my grandfather became very ill. Only one month before, my father's work schedule cut our first day in Auckland. Luckily rearranging accommodation and tours were easy enough, and everything worked out in the end.
To know that we almost didn't make it to New Zealand made me appreciate everything about the trip and what the country had to offer. Zero pollution. Over-the-top politeness of the locals and plants that grow two times as large. I felt reconnected to nature, and I never felt this amazing physically in a while. This will be a trip my parents and I talk about for years and years to come!
