sharks, ferns and Rata trees (oh - and St Patrick too)

I never realized that Auckland was an Irish city - but then again, if NY is, then Auckland may be too.....  there are a lot of people dressed in green today, there was a parade this morning, and i can already feel that there will be a lot of drunk people tonight - but we will be in bed by then....
We got up early (jet lag - still....), and had about 16 cups of coffee (the people of Auckland take their coffee seriously, there are coffee houses at every corner), then headed out to "Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic encounter" - Kelly Tarlton is like NZ's Jacques Cousteau- and he built this really cool aquarium, including a large colony of penguins (I LOVE PENGUINS!).  This also involved getting on this bus - which, by itself would have been worth it.....

In the afternoon, we went  west of Auckland to see the rain forest, as well as the beaches on the Tasman sea ( the view from our hotel is toward the Pacific Ocean, but, as I've said before, Auckland is completely surrounded by water).  The terrain is very rugged and hilly, but in between hills, one can see these magnificent beaches:

we went down to one of them (Piha beach).  The sand is black because it is volcanic and has a high concentration of iron.  It was not too sunny today, which was good, because it becomes unbearably hot when the sun shine on it.

I f we had one more day to spend in Auckland, I would love to spend it on that beach - the waves were very tempting, and there were a lot of surfers, which is always fun.
We then went to the rain forest:  the hills (old volcanoes) between Auckland center and the Tasman sea provide the perfect climate for rain forest vegetation - they are stuck between 2 bodies of water, the cloud stop right on top of them, and the climate is temperate enough.  Interestingly, unlike most rain forest, they do not have any scary inhabitants:  no snakes, no spiders, no scorpions....nothing poisonous.  One can walk in the forest wearing flip flops, and not worry about any creature taking a bite.  We heard and saw the human sounding Tui birds, but that was about it for the animal kingdom (except for the cicadas, which are everywhere and very loud).  There are some  very cool trees around here, so I got to hug some:

and just admire some others, like this Rata tree - which start it's life as a vine, and then grows so big that it kills the tree it surrounds and becomes a tree itself:

Also learned that "fern trees" are not really trees (although they look like one), but just a really big ferns, where the trunk is just the leftover of the leaves that have fallen off.

When we got home, we were just too tired to deal with the crowds of drunk people wearing green (favorite t-shirt:  "Irish today, hangover tomorrow!") and just had take out Thai food on our deck.

Tomorrow - renting a car and driving to Rotorua - Joe  and I agreed that, since they drive on the wrong side of the road here, he will do the driving, and I will do the screaming (I can barely cross the street without putting my life in danger, so i'm definitely not driving!   I believe I will make a very good screamer though....)!