I arrived at 5:30 A.M. after a 13-hour flight from Los Angeles on Air New Zealand. I felt surprisingly good because it is usually very difficult for me to get any sleep on these long flights. But I remember saying to one of the flight attendants, so we should be about halfway there by now. But we were less than 3 hours from Auckland. I had somehow gotten some sleep.
After a brief shuttle ride to the Stamford Plaza Hotel, I took an upgraded room so I could check-in before breakfast. After breakfast, I walked to the wharf and took a ferry to the island of Waiheke. It was a wonderful 45-minute ride to an island packed with wineries and other leisurely things to do. But I decided just to hike to the top of the island instead, a 15-minute up, and then took the next ferry back to Auckland. After a quick walk to the bus stop, I hopped on a city tour bus to see the highlights of Auckland. That’s how I saw where Sir Edmund Hillary went to grammar school. Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the first confirmed climber to summit Mt. Everest in 1953. I finished off the day at the Sky Tower, the icon of Aukland’s skyline for the past 20 years.