Final thoughts

I did catch up the the 2 Mensa people on Saturday. We met at a movie theatre about 5 minutes from the motel and then walked a few hundred metres to a Vietnamese restaurant. The food was very good and I tried an Avocado shake which was an interesting and quite tasty drink. I had a couple of hours to kill in the motel before I left and was looking at the TV. They had quite a few Sky channels and I actually stumbled across a 30 minute program just covering hockey. They showed a number of the Olympic qualifying tournaments for the women. Mostly it was the goals and they made it look so easy.

The next morning I packed then drove down to Davenport for a look around. This is a harbourside suburb on a peninsular opposite the CBD so there is a great view of the city buildings and the main motorway bridge from the ferry terminal there.

I drove along the beach front seeing more of the water and came across a Maori war canoe off one of the beaches.

I then took a leisurely drove back the way I'd come in from the south, filled the car at over $2 per litre and then had fish and chips for lunch.

It was only a few km from there to the car hire depot and after checking back in I was dropped at the bus stop to the airport with a voucher for a ride. Even on that trip you drive along the water front. In fact the whole of Auckland is located on a series of beaches bays and rivers. The city and suburbs stretch from one side of the Island to the other.

I bought some Baileys at the duty free and that left me with just over $5 in NZ currency. I did meet some other hockey players and the mob from Rotorua in the airport. The plane was a bit late arriving but it seemed like we made up most of the time as it arrived in Sydney about the time expected. I watched the movie "I am Legend".

It took a while for my hockey sticks to come through and I was starting to get worried about making the connection. However you actually check in in the international terminal so that meant I was there in plenty of time. We then caught the transfer bus to the domestic terminal. The plane to Perth was again a 747 and was pretty full. I was sitting near the back in row 71. That suggests somewhere near 700 people. This time the film was "The Bucket List" There was almost time for 2 films. I did some channel flipping but in the end tried to get some sleep instead. Fortunately my bags were off early and David was waiting for my call, so I was out of the airport fairly quickly. It was still nearly 11 before I got home and well after midnight before I finally got to bed. That was 4 am NZ time so I've been a bit groggy today.

It was a great 2 weeks over all. It was fantastic to play for my country and the girls on the team and the result made it even better. New Zealand is such a picturesque place, you felt you needed to take a photo every time you crested a hill. Hopefully I will return some time and see the South Island which, hard to believe, is supposedly even more beautiful.