We rested up after our trip to the Northland and waited for the rainy weather to ease up just a bit. After searching for activities in Auckland and its surrounding areas, we decided to visit the Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT; http://www.motat.org.nz). Our GPS was confused about where the MOTAT site was, so we ended up using Kent's smartphone to navigate through the twisty Auckland streets (which are NOT laid out in the grid pattern familiar to us in the West!).
We arrived at the main MOTAT site just before noon and had a quick lunch in the cafe before taking a gander of the Sir Edmund Hillary trek to the South Pole. We caught a trolley that took us from the main MOTAT site to the aviation site. The trolley conductor operates the car just as they did for inner city transport -- the trolley line even has its own stoplight where it crosses a roadway.
The aviation exhibits were great! The emphasis was on airplanes that had flown in New Zealand, both military and civilian. We could have spent several hours just wandering through the huge gallery, but we had agreed to take the Rail Tour. Of course, our first question for Bruce (our tour guide) was "Why is there a Rail Tour in the Aviation Exhibit?" Bruce explained that he and others use the warehouses on site (behind the Aviation Museum) for restoration of rail cars and locomotives. Bruce is a carpenter and restores the wooden portions of the rail cars (sides, seats, window frames, etc.). Most of the exposed portions are made with kauri (the largest trees in New Zealand) while the seats are generally made with rimu. He also showed us a piece of purpleheart (the most dense wood in the world; http://www.wood- database.com/lumber- identification/hardwoods/purpleheart), which they use where the trains need really strong support. They also have a shop to mill the metal pieces for the engines and other metal parts. They're quite self-sufficient in their shops – by necessity – since they use traditional techniques (e.g., attaching metal pieces with rivets rather than welding them together). It's quite an operation!
Bruce kept us captivated for 2 hours and we barely had time to catch the return trolley back to the main site and retrive our trusty station wagon. The final irony of the visit was that we took the motorway back to our Auckland flat -- the trip out took about 45 minutes (with much discussion about the shortcomings of our GPS) while the return trip took 12 minutes. As our friend Judy likes to say, "Technologeeeeeeeeee!"
