08/11/2016 Today is all going to be about museums. I woke up early again, and made myself some bacon and lettuce sandwiches for breakfast. The plan is to make it to the Maritime History museum, time to see a few exhibits before going on the Heritage cruise. I chatted with a guy from Manchester, Stephen, who is going round the world taking part in marathons - he just did the Auckland one, and was heading off that day to get ready for the Sydney one.
The guy sleeping in the bunk above me, Arthur from Belgium advised that he had managed to get a job as he had been looking, and so his task for the day was to find a place to live, given that the hostel is probably slightly more expensive than renting - though we joked about property prices in Auckland being the highest in the world.
I made my way to the harbour with plenty of time to spare, so dropped by a cabin there offering volcano tours for $65NZ. I check what sort of time it takes, as it may be an option for tomorrow before I get the bus to Rotorua. I opted to mull over it while I visitted the Maritime museum.
When I got there, I discovered that the heritage sail was not running for any of the ships, due to there being forecast of gale force winds. Ah well, I'm sure I'll have another chance to go on a boat at some point during this adventure!
I spent 2.5 hours at the museum, there was plenty to see, and I could probably have stayed even longer. I had a go at the "design your own boat" exhibit, which was fun, it had a clever program that showed your boat being fast, slow, capsizing, or even sinking, depending on what you set the boat length/sail size/keel length/keel weight.
There was also a 5 person team game which I watched some people try - the first group didn't try to figure anything out, and just seemed to do stuff at random - unsurprisingly, they didn't do very well, but the second group were paying attention to what was happening, and reading the screens and instructions, and did quite well. I met a couple from Switzerland, who mentioned about how they were proud their country had won the round the world boat race twice , and we discussed how it seemed strange, given that Switzerland is landlocked, and all it has are a few (small) lakes!
There was also an exhibit about immigration, and migration in to New Zealand. It seemed pretty relevant to the rhetoric that has been bandied about back home, with the government determined to clamp down on people coming in to the country - as opposed to New Zealand's policy of wanting more people to come in to fill job roles.
As it got to 1230h,and I wanted to go to the Art Gallery, I decided to leave the Maritime one at that point to give myself a chance to have some lunch. I went in to the i Site tourist information, and found out that is possible to do the Waitomo stuff and Hobbiton stuff while based in Rotorua, so I went ahead and booked a ticket for the volcano tour.
The person who served me, Andrew, was from Fochabers, of all places - I recognised his northern Scotland accent pretty much instantly which created a connection to talk about - he has been in New Zealand for 2 months. Maybe I should have looked at the idea of doing a working visa - I know for next time!
I grabbed lunch at Burger King again, mainly so that I could take advantage of their WiFi, as I wanted to get more photos uploaded. It also happened to be close to the Art Gallery.
At the Art gallery, I went to see the Maori portraits, by Gottfried Lindauer.
Having an image or something that depicts an ancestor is worth a lof of mana (prestige) in Mauri culture, so these portraits that were commissioned, which include many of the important leaders from Maori tradition - the people who signed the treaty with the UK regarding land rights, colonialism etc - are very important to the Maori people. Some of them were created from old black and white photos without the subjects present, as they had died 40 years prior to Lindauer ing the portraits.
I have to admit that I was completely blown away by the quality of the artwork on display. Some of the paintings looked so realistic, yet having a blank backdrop, almost looked more real than photographs. Indeed, for some of the paintings, it looked like the person being depicted wasn't painted, but rather was actually there behind the frame.
Altogether I spent around 2 hours going round the exhibit, which left me with 1 hours left to explore the rest of the gallery. One item that caught my attention was the "To all new arrivals" arrivals exhibit, which, like the exhibit at the Maritime museum, was related to migration.
All of the works on display there were interesting, though there was a giant wall mural by John Pule which was the main piece. Most people in the room seemed to only look at it briefly, but I noticed that while being huge, it was full of so many little details that it really required careful study. I discussed with one of the staff members about it, as it was only blue and black on a white canvas. Some of the things I noticed for example was that the blue was used in places which should have been red - and the staff member advised me that, red is another colour that the artist uses as opposed to blue, in other works.
I left the art gallery at closing time, and made my way back to the hostel. I have decided that I will try to fix the tent flysheet using the magical powers of Duck Tape, and if that fails, only then proceed to try and contact North Face for a replacement fly sheet. I had hung the fly sheet and main tent up at either end of the bunk bed, and so they were nice and dry by now.
After preparing some noodles for dinner, I got to work on the repair, which looks to be effective, but only time will tell. I then packed the tent away and attempted to pack everything in to the rucksack - now that I have sent 2kg of clothes back, I have been able to organise the remaining clothes better in to the orgnisation bags I got last x-mas, which makes packing the rucksack a lot easier now.
I spent the rest of the evening relaxing and drip feeding the photos on to the server.