Days 1 and 2 - Auckland & Hamilton activities

Group at Balle Brothers Vegetable operation

SDSU group 

View of Auckland from Skytower

Our trip started off with a slight hiccup, and by slight we mean half of the group did not make it to New Zealand until day two of the trip (May 12th). Half of the SDSU group was stuck in Minneapolis with flight delays from foul weather, and Dr. Rusk & one of the OSU students, Kendall, also had weather issues. So ten students made the journey across the Pacific to New Zealand. We were all pretty worried about making it through customs, especially since NZ has very strict biosecurity protocols. Austin was the only one who had any issues. His boots needed to be sterilized as he had worn them on a farm back home. We then met up with Ron McPhail, our tour guide, and Reese, our bus driver for the day. They loaded us up in a large traveler’s bus and took us to Mount Eden, which was a vantage point high above the city of Auckland created thousands of years ago by a volcano. Breakfast treats were then had on a beach along the Auckland Harbor, where the sands are black, not white. It continually rained on and off that first day, so we spent a couple of hours in the Auckland Museum of Natural History. The museum had dinosaur, Maori, and early NZ displays as well as a tribute to all of NZ’s fallen soldiers from wars of the past. Jet lag was starting to affect all of us, so we checked into the hotel for a couple hours of R&R. Around six o’clock, the ten of us headed to the tallest building in the southern hemisphere, the Sky Tower. Being fifty stories high above the largest city in NZ provided a breath-taking view of the city and harbor. People could pay money to bungy jump off the building, which was something that terrified most of us. Supper was a seafood buffet on the third floor of the Sky Tower. Many of us tried sushi for the first time, some liking it more than others. After supper, nine of us fought back the temptation to sleep so we could experience the night-life of a large foreign city. We found an Irish pub called Father Teds which had a trivia night going on. Number one thing learned from Day 1, none of us are good at trivia.

Day two went far more according to plan than day one. The other members of our group arrived early on the morning of the 13^th. They met us at our hotel and we all left as a whole group for the first time. Our destination, Hamilton, with plenty of stops along the way. The first stop was Balle Brothers, which was a vegetable industry company who gave us a tour of their company. They produce mainly potatoes, carrots and onions, onions being their top export of 200,000 tons processed per day. Fortunately, our tour guide was kind enough to give us enough carrots to last us the whole trip. After visiting Balle Brothers we toured Fresh Vegetable Product Group and then made a stop for lunch. After a bad sushi experience the first day, the majority of us played it safe for lunch and had McDonald’s or Subway. After lunch we made a stopped at the supermarket to stock up on supplies, and continued on our way to visit two of New Zealand’s leading Agritech companies. Gallagher Animal Management Systems was the first agritech tour. They are a top producer of electric fence and weighing EID systems. They are a family owned company and they sponsor a New Zealand rugby team. A fun fact about Gallagher is that they also supply the security systems for Buckingham Palace. GEA was the final stop of the day. It is formerly a privately owned New Zealand company which offers complete milking and herd management solutions for Rotary and Herringbone dairy systems. Finally, we were on our way to our hotel and finished the night off with supper in our hotel and a night out exploring Hamilton.