Tim & Denise Tiner Travels: 2025 New Zealand - September - Day 09

September 19, 2025

Our stay in Hamilton was quite quick. But we accomplished what we wanted to…see Hobiton and attend the Hamilton New Zealand Temple. We arranged our schedule for today (Friday) to get up to Auckland and do an earlier temple session in the Auckland temple. It turns out that this temple was just dedicated in April of this year. So it is really new.

The drive from Hamilton to Auckland was about 1.5 hours. Everyone warned us about the traffic in Auckland. But honestly, it was not bad and has not been too bad as we drove around Auckland today. The Auckland temple sits right on the major highway that leaves Auckland…Highway 1. It looks massive from that highway as you drive towards it. It’s about 45k sqft. Hamilton, is similar sized. We arrived early and needed to get white clothing. I’m not sure how, but Denise got hooked up with one of the Assistant Matrons (a wife of a presidency member) and she became our personal escort even getting us into an earlier session. We had signed up for the 11:30 AM session. But she was able to direct us quickly and we were able to attend the 10:30 AM session. The temple site also houses a Stake Center and a Missionary Training Center. So lots going on here.

After our temple time, we drove to our hotel out by the airport. It is a Holiday Inn. And it is a nice one and a bit away from the sound of airplanes coming and going. Since we were a bit early, I asked if we could still get into our room. The gal behind the counter said our room was not ready. I said that’s ok. She said I had a ‘twin’ room. I said, really? She said, yea a room with 2 queens sized beds in it. I did not realize that ‘twin’ means two beds in the same room. Not necessarily two twin sized beds. I jokingly said…Oh, I just wanted bigger beds. She asked me if I’d like a king sized bed. I said sure. She then said that they had one ready that we could have. I gave her thumbs up and off we went.

After getting set up in the room, Denise came up with the idea to go to the zoo. We looked at going to a movie. But they seemed far. So we settled in on the zoo. Aquariums, zoo’s, I guess we are animal and nature lovers now. Go figure. As it turns out, their zoo was quite amazing. We arrived around 2 PM and it closed at 4:30 PM and they were having to shoo us out of there. The habitats for the animals from all over the world were absolutely amazing. So well done. I’ll share some photos of our time there. But it was a good choice and time better spent than chilling in our room.

After the zoo, we chose a place that looked nice by our hotel to go and eat. As we drove up to it, it looked like a dump. We drove all around and the only things that looked semi-clean and new was a Burger King and a KFC. Denise chose KFC for our final dinner here in New Zealand. Go figure. I guess it’s a way to get us ready to come home tomorrow. Right now there are 30+ open seats on the plane. Denise sits at #7 and I’m #11. I doubt we’ll get business class which is a bummer since it is a 12 hour flight. But I just want to get on. You never know with these long haul flights and how weight restrictions play in. If we don’t get on, we will be here another two nights and try to get on the Monday flight which shows over 80+ seats open. We will get home someday!

It’s been a really nice trip. We’ve played more than we normally do…at least it feels that way. But New Zealand is a beautiful country. It is modern. It is green. And the people are fantastic. I’ve only been honked at a couple times and almost hit by another car once (his fault). But having said this, we are excited to get home.

Pictures:

Some Auckland temple photos….

This is the Missionary Training Center that sits next to the temple where missionaries going out to certain areas of the world come to be trained and prepared to serve and teach.

These flags, we believe, represent the countries where missionaries are going to go serve and who come to this MTC to be trained…if that makes sense.

Coming out of the temple, I couldn’t seem to bring up my emails using cell data. So knowing that all churches around the world have WiFi, we connected using WiFi there to get the address of the Holiday Inn where we were staying for the night. In the end, I think it was the email site and not the fact that cell coverage was bad.

Some zoo pictures:

Ahh…two love birds.

This was funny. We watched two turtles wrestle. The smaller one almost had the bigger one pinned (one his back). But the bigger one eventually got right side up and then began to push the little one around, even hitting him with his…paw? Not sure what you call it. It was fun to watch. After a few minutes they both gave up and just walked away.

They had a dinosaur part of the park. And this creature was an Utah Raptor. That’s what the sign said!

This was a baby Baboon. The guy could barely walk. He was climbing and tumbling all over the place. His mother, however, quite a close eye on him make sure he was ok.