Awk! In Auckland

We spent Wednesday morning in Auckland – a port city that is on both the East and West Coasts of the Northern Island of New Zealand. There is a “neck” that splits the North Island into two sections and Auckland sits on that neck. Making up most of that neck is a dormant volcano field that makes this spread out, American style city a beautiful place to visit by bicycle or car.

We met a friend just off the boat. During our car trip in the Southwest US, we met Bryan Taylor bicycling his way along old Route 66 while we both were sheltering from a sandstorm at a Painted Desert Ranger station. Connie has kept up correspondence and he offered to show us Auckland if we ever got here and so he did.

We started with the gannets nesting site preserve on the Western side of the island. What had started in 1972 as a few remaining birds out on an isolated rock by a public beach has turned into a bird city that reaches the shore cliffs. As the birds’ needs expanded, the human available areas have been shrunk. They have been joined by a few other shore dwelling species with gulls working the areas looking to steal an egg or chick for a quick meal, squealing, “Mine! Mine,” as they play chicken with the sharp beaks on the nests. If gannetts were not one of the clumsiest birds on Earth, the seagulls would die very quickly. In the spat below, one of the two neighbors ended up falling off the cliff very comically. Unfortunately, (or fortunately for the bird) I could not get into video mode fast enough to catch the debacle!

Going Over!

After the gannet sanctuary, we wandered over to Mount Eden, the tallest of the volcanoes that was an ancient Maori Pa (fortress) and the starting point for surveying all of the North Island. There are over a dozen such shield volcanoes within the city limits with monuments and prominent buildings on the summits of most. This ancient cinder cone was covered with grass and terraced with a handful of trees along the rim. The terracing and trees made for excellent cover while anyone scaling the volcano was totally exposed and forced to drop their weapons to get to the next level – at least before the day of modern artillery and paratroopers. Also on the rim, at one side, were several surveyor markers and plaques marking and commemorating the location as the starting point for all survey work. Around us we could see the layout of the entire city with clear views of both Eastern and Western port facilities as well as many of the surrounding volcanoes. I spotted a needle tower that Bryan said had a restaurant at the top, but Connie wanted to eat closer to the ground.

After a short stop for some fine food, Bryan found a wool yarn store for Connie to explore, which took most of the rest of our time we were supposed to be in Auckland. New Zealand is known for its wool, but it turns out to be rather hard to buy within the country. Most goes to China to be turned into finished goods.

After the yarn store, WE returned to the ship on time, as usual. However, once again there was some official excursion that was two hours late coming back to the ship so we spent a good part of the evening cleaning up and enjoying each others company viewing the harbor from our stateroom. Apparently, this delay will cost us an early start tomorrow in Tauranga.

As the ship was departing, we noticed two South Korean warships were on the opposite side of the Hilton hotel that made up our dock. They were offering a public viewing of the docked vessels as a part of what looked like a friendship Port of Call. If we had realized, we could have easily snuck off for one more adventure so close. There was so much to see in Auckland and so little time, we will definitely have to return…