Traveling with Ray Owens

We had to say goodbye to our new friends and acquaintances today. Most everyone on the Viking post extension are heading home today.

We will be here in Auckland until Thursday morning. We had no plans for today. The weather turned out to be awfully nice. So we opted to walk down the gentle sloping street for the 15 minute trek to the wharf area. We opted to visit the New Zealand Maritime Museum. We arrived about 10 minutes before a very knowledgeable guide started his complementary tour. We were joined by 8 other folks and taken to see the highlights of the museum.

The first section of the Museum told the story of the first people to sail the South Pacific. Recent studies of both archaeological and DNA have confirmed that the people came from Southeast Asia some 5000 to 6000 years ago. The last major land area to be found and settled was New Zealand around 1300 AD.

Our guide made a concerted effort to emphasize that these early navigators had an extensive knowledge of the natural world that they passed down through generations without a written language.

They understood the skies, the swells in the ocean, the changing clouds on the horizon and so much more. They developed navigation instruments that corresponded to the stars that gave them the ability to travel into the unknown and when they found habitable areas they could travel back to the starting place and tell others.

The story of the Europeans who came to this part of the world was much like many other places like Africa and Asia and the Americas. Europeans ventured forth with the goal of creating a profit. The East India trading company is a prime example.

Another section of the museum was the recent progress in sailing competitive yachts. There was a 49 minute documentary film of the crew of the ENZA New Zealand catamaran that won the Jules Vern Prize for the race around the world by sailing. It was pretty amazing to watch. Here is a link to a YouTube video from BBC. https://youtu.be/CUYEjJ8pHGk?feature=shared

Then there was the section about the exploring the oceans at the bottom of the world. Roland Amundsen lead the first crew to reach the South Pole. Ernest Shackleton “In 1914, Shackleton made his third trip to the Antarctic with the ship ‘Endurance’, planning to cross Antarctica via the South Pole. Early in 1915, ‘Endurance’ became trapped in the ice, and ten months later sank. Shackleton’s crew had already abandoned the ship to live on the floating ice. In April 1916, they set off in three small boats, eventually reaching Elephant Island. Taking five crew members, Shackleton went to find help. In a small boat, the six men spent 16 days crossing 1,300 km of ocean to reach South Georgia and then trekked across the island to a whaling station. The remaining men from the ‘Endurance’ were rescued in August 1916. Not one member of the expedition died.”

The walk from the museum back to the hotel had a bit of a surprise. You remember that gentle sloping hill we walked down? I do not know how they did it but somehow they transported Baldwin street from Dunedin the world’s steepest street to Auckland. Perhaps it just felt that way.

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant that was tucked into a small food court in an old warehouse. The pasta was good and familiar.

Tomorrow is Hobbiton.