We sat waiting for our bicycles for nearly an hour not knowing where the heck they were. Standing nervously by the door marked clearly \"Oversized Baggage\" I paced back and forth while we made friends with a 60ish woman who'd flown from England. Finally they announced that the Bikes were actually at the other end of the claim area. Andy and I skipped (literally) over to them and headed for customs. I was a little worried about passing through. The customs form was complicated. It pandered to the Kiwis' warranted paranoia over biological contamination. Because we had bikes, the form stated that we had to go to agricultural inspection.
The female officer who directed us to the red line questioned us about our origins, our occupations and purposes. She had the nerve to ask us if we had pornographic material on our website. Andy asked her if she'd be the type that would visit it if it did and fortunately she didn't take any offense. Luckily the agricultural dudes were as easy going as our porn lover friend and passed us through. Within a few moments we were outside the terminal in the humid pre-dawn air putting Siegfried and Roy back together again. Constructing a little changing room out of the discarded boxes we were in lycra and on the road within an hour.
Shockingly this ride proved false the BikeBrats truism \"The road to and from the Airport is always a drag\". Within five minutes we were on a quite road through farmland, mooing at cows and pumping along ecstatically. We saw two cyclists advancing on us after a few km's and soon they caught up with us. Gary and Caroline were out for a training ride on fast and light racing bikes. They slowed and guided us into town along nearly deserted roads by the waterfront. They led us to a vista that gave us a 360-degree glimpse of Auckland. The two parted company with us just before we mounted the summit, saying it was too steep for them that their gears were too high for it.
We probably should have turned around right then, put our tails between our legs and headed to town for brunch. A few moments later we were dripping with sweat, hearts leaping out of our chests and our legs screaming at us for attempting this on our first day out. The view was worth it. And the tree on top of aptly named \"One Tree Hill\" was certainly magnificent despite its circumcision scar. A few years ago an angry Maori had tried to cut it down and had somehow been stopped and the tree saved. A tourist visiting from Wellington took one look at all the gear we were carrying and said \"got your chainsaw in there or what?, demonstrating his quick Kiwi wit.
We navigated our way into sunny, warm and humid Auckland where Andy put his \"brunch curb feelers\" on, quickly locating a hip sidewalk café where we munched and slurped our second breakfast. This time we were awake enough to enjoy it. We were disappointed to find that our hotel, the Albion, didn't have our rooms ready as promised and we were just too rank to tour the city without a little shower. The tourist information office was glad to help us find an alternative and cancel our little arrangement with the Albion. \"Power-tourists\" I declared us as we high-tailed it to the waterfront to board a harbor tour.
We anticipated the pinnacle of the tour to be a stop at the aquarium. This one was hailed as not your average goldfish tank. It was a reclaimed sewage treatment plant that now housed live penguins and a shark tank you can walk through. The penguins were truly cool but you had to get on this silly tram to see them. The cars were constructed to simulate snow cats and we had to bear really cheesy visual and sound effects before actually viewing the very cool birds. Turns out that 18 of them were shipped in from San Antonio, Texas' Sea World.
We smiled at their antics as they tobogganed across their icy enclosure and wowed us with their underwater grace. The last little scene on our snow cat ride was a food chain demonstration. There we saw a fake seal eat a fake penguin and then, in turn, be munched by an orca (killer whale) that looked more like a blow-up souvenir from the penguins' origin than a sea mammal. All of this consumption made me hungry again so we, appropriately, decided on a seafood snack. Targeting a little lower on the food chain we opted for a plate of tasty New Zealand green-lipped muscles sautéed in butter and wine.
We mopped up the juice with soft bread and shared a local beer that was just a little too malty for my taste. Motoring through the harbor back towards our hotel we mused about the coming days and planned our itinerary, wondering what a night out on the town in Auckland will show us this night.