barrantes tour and travel: Dec 31: Waiheke Island, Wine, and Welcoming in the New Year

Todd, Katie & Mijin enjoying gelato on Auckland's waterfront

Thanks to our mandatory day of rest, we were ready for a great New Year's Eve. The best part about it was that first thing in the morning we drove into Auckland and met up with our friends from the States who had flown in - Katie, Jim, and Mijin!

Mijin and I went to college together and have been excellent friends since 1993. I met Katie at work at the University of Maryland, and we hang out with her and her partner Jim all the time back home in DC. They had all flown in the day before and were joining us for the rest of our great Kiwi roadtrip.

As I think I've previously mentioned, Auckland is kinda borning, and since Mijin, Katie and Jim had spent the previous day walking all around town, we opted to take the ferry to Waiheke Island, another island in the bay nearby by Rangitoto Island where we went on Christmas Eve.

Unlike the nature preserve of Rangitoto Island, Waiheke is a hoity-toity, fancy-shmancy island. There are wineries, HUGE homes, art galleries, and very rich people. When Jay-Z opened for U2 in a recent Auckland concert, he and his lovely wife Beyonce stayed in a private home on Waiheke Island. Enough said. For a few hours, we joined the Waiheke Island population.

The ferry ride over was sunny and lovely, and I saw a contestant from New Zealand's Next Top Model on the ferry with us and took a sneaky picture. I'm now up to three - it's a small country. Upon arrival, we grabbed a map of the wineries and headed off to the closest one for tastings.

The closest one was Cable Bay Wineries, and the minute we walked through the door, we knew we wouldn't be leaving to try and hit another one before having to catch the ferry back. They had a rolling lawn in back of the restaurant/cellar building with sculptures around the perimeter and (shockingly...not) AN AMAZING VIEW. We tasted their delicious wines and then immediately grabbed a table on the back lawn, orderd some nibbles and more wine and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Back at the backpackers, Graham and Vanessa made our group of nine a delicious pasta dinner complete with strawberries and ice cream for dessert - yum!! We (obviously) brought the wine. :) We headed out on the town for New Year's Eve, and at least in Ponsonby, seemed to be one of only a few people doing that. A couple bars were hopping, but the Belgian Beer Garden that we had decided to camp out at until midnight kicked us off the patio and into the bar (no tables left) at 11pm! Fine - we're out.

We actually just headed back to the backpackers where we had an amazing view of the Sky Tower from the balconey. This was also much closer to our beds which meant I was asleep pretty darn quick once those fireworks were done.