We did not have a tour scheduled for today, so after breakfast David and I walked down to the Maritime Museum, which has a very good exhibit of the various types of ships and boats used in New Zealand from the time of the first Maori pioneers. In the harbor by the museum they have the America's Cup winner; one of the offered tours was a chance to sail as crew on the yacht. The museum is a self-guided tour through the history of marine transport in New Zealand. It begins with a CGI movie about the original ocean voyage of the Polynesians who became the Maori. The first area of the museum continues that theme, and includes a rendition of the creation story wherein Maui, a demi-god, fished the North Island up out of the sea: he caught a huge fish, and pulled it up out of the sea, then left it in the care of his brothers with strict instructions not to cut it up. But they were greedy and began eating pieces of Maui’s fish, which is why there are so many holes and sticking-out bits in the North Island and around Auckland.

You then move into an area with models and full-scale reconstructions of the various Polynesian sea canoes, followed by models and artifacts from sailing ships like those of Captain Cook and Abel Tasman, through the whaling era and steamship ferries to the modern yachting and America’s Cup designs . Auckland is called the City of Sails, and there is a boat of some sort in the city for every four people. The city is centered on a huge and highly convoluted bay, and built on 45-74 dormant volcanoes (the number changes depending on the source), so that most homes are within half a mile of the ocean and nearly all have a view of it. America’s Cup races are big deals here – our guide yesterday called it the oldest continual sporting contest in the world: the first race was held in 1851, and won by the American schooner America (which is why the trophy is called the America’s Cup). The modern Olympics were only started in 1898 or thereabouts, so the America’s Cup race does have bragging rights, although technically it is the trophy that is the oldest trophy in international sports, since the races are not scheduled at regular intervals, but occur whenever a qualified yacht club challenges the current holder of the cup.

After the museum visit, I walked around downtown Auckland for a while and did a bit of shopping – got some kiwi stuffed animals for the grandchildren and a shirt for myself. Auckland is a fairly large city; New Zealand has just over 4 million inhabitants, two-thirds of which live on the North Island, and half of those live in Auckland (about 1.3 million people). I was hoping to get some good pictures of the sail-away, but unfortunately it was too dark when we finally started out to get any decent views.