Auckland City Tour

I had to get up early and do some washing today as I head off on the bus tomorrow!

At 10.30 I boarded the Stray Auckland Tour. Both Stray and Kiwi Experience do free City Tours mainly to try and get you to book national tours with them. As I'm already booked with Kiwi I though it would be interesting to do the Stray tour!

We headed up to Ponsonby first which is a nice little suburb of Auckland with a few old houses (old here is Victorian!). We then headed across the harbour for views of the city skyline. Back across the bridge we went to the Americas Cup Village which is part of the harbour, we had a walk around and looked at some of the Americas Cup Boats. There was a massive motor boat in which our guide though was owned by the Sultan of Brunei! Off to another lookout which is a memorial as well to an ex prime minister, this was nice as it was pretty much opposite Rangitoto Island which I walked up a few days ago!

We then went to Mt Eden which is a dormant volcano with the most fantastic views out over the city, on one side you can see the Hauraki Gulf which is part of the Pacific and the other side is the Tasman! The stadium where the All Blacks sometimes play is also seen as well as Rangitoto Island, the city skyline - everything! The amazing part of the Mt is the crater! It is massive! It is sacred to the Maori for which reason I can't remember reight now, but basically it is tapu (taboo) for anyone to go down into it. Of course there are lots of little tracks where people have ignored this and walked down! Our guide was telling us that once some guys came up and rolled some tyres down, set them alight, this was around 5-6am so they called the local radio saying oh my god Mt Eden is erupting, the poice were called, 3000 people were evacuated from the nearby area, the police were too scared to go up and look! The guys then phoned back the radio station - APRIL FOOLS!

We went to an old ale house which is part of the Speights Brewery who sponser Stray! It was a bit pricey for food and drink but very nice!

It was interesting seeing how Stray operate but from the looks of it, it is the same as Kiwi!

Not a very interesting evening I just packed!