Auckland, the City of Sails

We arrived in Auckland at 10 pm, tired and frustrated. The airline lost my sister's luggage. Yeah, nice...this is the last thing you need when you arrive in unfamiliar place at 10 at night. They asked us if we want to wait until the last flight to arrive, which might have the luggage there. No, thanks! Can you send the luggage to our hotel? Provided you've found the luggage? OK, all settle then, we just want to go to bed now. Sure enough, the luggage arrived at 10 am the next day at our hotel. Years of travelling expereriences, this is the first time an airline lost our luggage. Anyway, we decided to enjoy Auckland, since we only have two days in this place.


First stop will always be The Sky Tower, where else, we don't even know what to do in this city. This is my second time in Sky Tower, it has changed a lot since the last time I saw it. Now you can jump from the building (with safety gear and flexible rope around you of course) and there were numerous restaurant and a casino as well. I was tempted to do the Sky Jump, but I was too lazy. I just lost my enthusiasm at that time...

Second stop was Kelly Tarlton Antartic Encounter and Underwater World. Cool! We didn't see any penguin up close during our trip, it'll be good. When we booked our ticket, we were told that the price is slashed to half price because there was flood there so they didn't open the underwater tunnel where you can see the sharks. Fair enough! I've seen too many sharks in Australia, not only in Underwater World but also in TV, newspaper, magazines, encyclopedias and usually followed by terrible stories of how they just killed some people. Just give me the cute penguins, thanks!

The cute penguins turned out to be gigantic penguins. Gargantuan! In Antartic Centre in Christchurch I did see the comparison of the size of the penguins from the smallest to the biggest one but nothing prepare me to see the real thing (even though there is nothing to be scared about, they are still cute...only big). We boarded another snow vehicle called Cat...something (I forgot!) and went into the penguin habitat. I've seen the smallest penguin which is the little penguin when I went to Phillip island in Melbourne, today I saw the second biggest penguin, the King Penguin. The biggest one is Emperor penguin, which can measure up to under my chin when they stand up, so you get the idea roughly how tall is King penguin. The second type of penguin I saw was Gentoo penguin, which is slightly smaller than King penguin, but...in my opinion, they are still big. Not to mention that they are fat and walk funny. But, under water is a totally different story, these slow creatures become as fast as tornado shot from a submarine, to see them swimming around is a pleasure itself. We did see some babies (What babies? They are as big as the parent, the only thing that differentiate them from adult penguin is their fur. The babies has soft brown fur that covers the whole body while their parent have black and white tuxedo style fur), and they are adorable. Can I bring one home?

We continue to look around and saw some giant sting rays (Why does everything has to be big in this place?). The sting rays swam closely to the edge of the aquarium and we can watch the bottom of this fish in details. Ok, enough for today. We have to catch the shuttle back to the city soon.