Last long post of photos from New Zealand

I keep running out of time to post these photos, but here goes

 This building was just near our hotel and fascinated us - we never did discover what it is used for.

 We spent a lovely day at Auckland Botanic Gardens with our extended family.  The children particularly loved it, there are some very special places for children in the Gardens.

 Here we all are, except for my nephew Peter who took the photo

 This was the view from the balcony of our hotel.  We went up to the viewing platform of the sky tower you can see there - 220 metres above ground.  The views were spectacular, all perfectly safe as we were behind glass.

 The blue tone is because of the glass I think, all the photos from the viewing platform came out like this.

 We finally saw some lovely roses in Auckland, we were too early everywhere else.  You need to click to enlarge the second photo which was a fantail displaying like mad just in front of us.  I was clicking and guessing as there was so much sun I had no idea what I was taking.

 We visited Kelly Tarlton's Aquarium, one of my favourite tours of the trip.
The aquarium is in an old converted sewerage tunnel and the penguins are wonderful.  The aquarium makes over 4 tonnes of ice every day to provide the habitat.  We were luck enough to arrive just on feeding time

 The two breeds are Gentoo and King - I could have stayed for hours watching them

 The gentoo penguins are breeding very successfully, the eggs were due to hatch in the next day or so and if you click to enlarge you will see the exposed egg under the penguin.

 The Rotorua Museum is an old Bath House from the late 1800s - people went to Rotorua for the steam baths.  What we saw looked pretty lethal to me, I would not like to have been taking the cure!

 This was the magnificent entrance to Te Puia, the Maori tourist centre with the geyser and mudpools, as well as much Moari culture.

 The main geyser was going off well behind us.

 

 This was a Maori meeting house - still used for Maori cultural events as well as tourists

 The weather in Whakatane where we were staying was not wonderful, and neither was the beach!

 These photos are loaded in the wrong order - this was the scene after the storm has passed

 This was the storm coming up and we were hightailing it home to avoid getting wet

This photo was of the storm approaching, and the one above (which I can't separate) is some roses in the Whakatane Botanic Gardens.
This has taken longer than I meant so I had better run and take the clothes of the line before the sun goes down.