Tonga/Bay of Islands/Auckland

Crossed the international dateline at midnight Monday.  Tuesday never happened for us so we hope nothing important happened that day.

TONGA - is one of the great points of origin and departure encompassing many, many islands.
Size - 290 Sq mi. ,  pop  - 12k,  language - English/Tongan.  Tonga is the only nation in the South Pacific with it's own royal family (a constitutional monarcy). Tongan society is quite conservative so people dress and behave modestly - even on beaches people tend to cover up.   To take photos permission must be granted.

We did a tour and found it quite interesting.  They refer to Tonga as The Kingdom, have a king &  queen, drive on the left, mandatory that they attend school from 6 to 18 years, have free medical coverage,  are mostly catholics although the king is methodist, and retirees get a pension of $65/month - not sure if that is US $  (1 US is equal to 2 local).  Climate always 30+ and humid.  Very friendly people.

BAY OF ISLANDS, NZ - from Tonga we head south for 2 days to NZ.  Next stop Bay of Islands which is 149 mi north of Auckland.  Bay of Islands stretches over the Pacific Ocean north of NZ north island.  Climate is semi tropical.  Pop 58k,  currency ANZ.  There are 144 islands in the Bay of Islands.  Home to a big variety of marine life and birds including little blue penguins and playful dolphins.

This is a tender port so we are anchored in the bay looking at just a small portion of the many islands mentioned above.  Everything we can see is very green - the dark green of the trees and an almost lime green for the rest of the vegetation.

The village is a tourist town - many tours for sightseeing, fishing.  It was a Sunday and a holiday weekend so many places were closed but there was a market, a lot of souvenir shops and restaurants  open.

AUCKLAND - day 19.  Sitting on the tip of NZ's north island with the South Pacific Ocean to the north and the Tasmanian sea to the west towards Australia.  Pop -1,500,000, temp this time  of year around 75.  Currency -NZ $ - (1$ US is about $1.5 NZ - about par for Can $).

Auckland is a cosmopitan city just waiting to be discovered by walking,   Also, explore the wine country - world renowned Pinot Noirs.  Auckland is popularly known as the City of Sails - has around 135k yachts sitting in her harbour (more per capita than any other city in the worid).

We did a walking tour around the downtown and harbor areas.  A lot of new modern buildings mixed with the old.  The waterfront reminds us of Fisherman's Wharf in SF, but better done.  The guide told us that Auckland has become very expensive and more homeless people have appeared in the last few years.

Finally, don't be sheepish - there are around 9 sheep for every person in NZ - since there are roughly 4 million NZ, that's a lot of sheep

Picture 1 - entertainers at Ancient Tonga; #2 - on the way to town at The Bay of Islands; #3 - kauri trees in Auckland.