Sun, Dec 8 - Returning to Auckland

Auckland skyline

After two more of Carolyn’s delicious omelets, we departed, stopping long enough to pick up yet another fab Beef & Chutney sandwich at the neighborhood bakery.

We got back on Hwy. 1 and headed south through Auckland, past the airport and turned east on a scenic route along the coast.  By eleven we had reached Miranda where a coastal preserve with bird hides is located.  Environmentalists started buying up tidal marsh about 30 years ago and now have an educational center, trails and hides.

Bird hide 

It started raining once we had parked and started out, but we don’t go anywhere without our umbrellas and windbreakers anymore, so we were OK.  It was dead high tide and from the hides we could see thousands of shorebirds on a thin sandbar quite far out in the ocean, so all we could see was a black mass of Oystercatchers, beige Godwits and white gulls.  In front of the hide was a huge mound of crushed shells, part of the Chenier Plain - a rare geological phenomenon consisting of a succession of shell ridges, separated by raised mud embayments extending from the base of the hills behind us out to the shore line and about 4500 years old.

Chenier Plain

We went to the preserve headquarters and had our sandwich on their terrace, and decide to return to the hide before going back to Auckland, and we found that the tide had gone out far enough so that most of the birds were now wading and probing the mud, and there was a small flock of Wrybills, small grey and white waders with a black throat band and a very unusual right-hand bend to the tip of their bill - what that’s for we don’t’ know but it’s very cute.

Black-billed Gull

Wrybills

We started back for Auckland between downpours and arrived at the Airport Holiday Inn where my sister, Hilary, had gotten us a room at this very nice hotel.  She’s on her way via Honolulu and Brisbane and expects to land here at midnight.  We unloaded our luggage and handed in the car to APEX car rental.  They kindly drove us back to our hotel where there is a coin operated laundry!!!  Yaah!  Clean laundry!

All cleaned up, we headed into dinner and opted for the a la carte rather than the steam table buffet.  Bob had a grilled lamb rump on mash and I had large shrimp on avocado and a plate of roasted kumara (Polynesian sweet potatoes), and then we noticed people returning from the buffet with plates of raw oysters!!   All-you-can-eat oysters and I passed them up??!!

To bed and we will hopefully see Hil and her luggage tomorrow morning!