March 10

Our last night in Snell’s Beach.  This was the best place yet for ambiance and value.  Highly recommended for anyone heading to N.Z. for a trip.  At 3:00 in the morning we looked out and saw 10 billion stars.  We don’t see that sight much with all of our light pollution in cities.

We passed this idyllic beach on our way to Auckland to visit the Maori Marae that my friend Lyonel Grant created.  Doug managed to snap a picture of the Auckland sky as we passed over the harbour bridge.

It is impossible to describe the feelings of amazement, respect for tradition, wonderment at the beauty and admiration for talent that we felt during Lyonel’s tour of this amazing place.  He spent 6 years creating this work of art.  Every piece of the building has his hand in it somewhere.  He designed the whole thing including structural components, design of each panel, symbolism, gathering the history and tradition and doing the majority of the physical carving.  Along with this he did bronze casting to create major structural components and invented new techniques to work some of the Maori history into the castings.  Here are some pictures that give a small idea of the work involved.

We ended our day back at Warkworth in a rather noisy Motel.  Went for supper at another RSA (like our Legion) and had a great meal for great price.  On our way to supper we had to stop for this gaggle of ducks to cross the street.  Even the cars stopped while they crossed the street.