Auckland, New Zealand

While we wait for our luggage, we watch a beagle, which I assume to be a drug-sniffer, walk amongst the bags of fellow travelers. The dog is small, even for a beagle, and wears the official vest of the Auckland Airport.

After sniffing one bag, the beagle sits, and his handler asks the woman to whom the bag belongs if she has brought any fruit into the country.

(Fruit?)

She shakes her head. Still, the handler asks permission to go through her bag. He pulls out an apple, and the woman is obviously embarrassed. Mark tells me he saw the sniffer find two oranges while I was in the ladies’ room.

With our luggage, we make our way through customs toward the exit. I’m gathering my things from the x-ray conveyor when Mark, just behind me, gets stopped. A fellow asks him, “Deed ya uhnderstand the deeclaration form ya feelled out on the plane before y’ landed?” Mark says he did, and the man tells him matter-of-factly that the x-ray of his luggage shows that “ya packed boots, bu’ ya deen’ dehclare theem.” Mark picks up on my “I told you so” through my sigh and eye roll; I declared mine.

Mark’s bag is pulled from the conveyor, the boots are removed, and the soles are caked in dried mud. The man tells Mark he could fine him NZ$200, which is a bit less than $200 American. But thankfully he doesn’t. What he does do is take the boots for a complete cleaning/decontamination while we wait: about 10 minutes.

It’s morning in Auckland, New Zealand, a complete 18 hours ahead of EST, so we’re ready for bed, but we vow to stay up until 8 p.m., the trick to avoiding jet lag.

After dropping our luggage at our hostel and showering, the first attraction we investigate in Auckland, one of the largest cities in New Zealand, is the Sky Tower. It’s the tallest building in the southern hemisphere at more than two tenths of a mile tall (that’s nearly 1070 feet). Instead we take the elevator to the observation deck and can see the city, the Tasman Sea and three grass-covered volcanic calderas. Supposedly, there are 48 volcanoes in the area. While we’re observing the landscape, we see two folks bungee jump from the top, higher than the observation deck, but at NZ$195 per plunge, it’s too steep for us.

From Sky City we ride the free shuttle to Kelly Tarlton’s Antarctic Encounter and Underwater World, where we read about the adventures of Scott, Amundsen and Shackelton, the three main explorers of Antarctica in the early 20th century. A train takes us through the icy area where penguins dive and waddle. A 10-gallon aquarium is thick with pastel-colored seahorses, buoying above and hiding within the faux kelp. Eels, shark and a stingray swim in the larger pool. One ray is as big as the circle at the top of the key of a basketball court. I never knew they could grow so large.

We’re shuttled back to town and stop for pizza on our walk back to the hostel, then ice cream. Mark gets the national flavor, Hokey Pokey: vanilla with tiny toffee bits.

Tucked in by 6:30 p.m. listening to the radio and reading, we put out the lights at 7 p.m., relieved that we didn’t conk out earlier.

Sunday morning we’re up early for a bus to the zoo. We see the nocturnal, flightless kiwi, like a furry coconut with chicken feet and a hairy bird head. Its long beak has nostrils on the end since it hunts for food by smell. More birds we see are peacocks with their showy plumage on display and the kookaburra, about the size of an eagle but quite less grand. Its feathers look like unkempt, dirty hair, like he just got out of bed after a fitful sleep. The zoo is home to kangaroos, elephants, and apes, but surprisingly no crockadile.

By mid afternoon we’re at the Auckland Museum, which is huge. One could spend five hours here learning about the Maori, the native peoples of New Zealand, and then ascend to the second floor for natural history and on to the third for New Zealand’s war history. We learn that the Maori are skilled carvers, young people go through a right-of-passage ceremony, the chiefs of the villages live in the house with the most intricately carved façade, and town meetings are held at the chief’s residence. That’s all we have time to learn; we’re tired.

These two days in Auckland have allowed us to get acclimated to the time. In the morning we begin our 19-day tour to see what both the north and south islands have to offer. We’re ready.