Coast-to-Coast

A couple of weekends ago, we took a break from our excursions and opted to stay in Auckland for some urban hiking. We tackled the Coast-to-Coast walkway, a 16km trek across the narrowest part of New Zealand (aka 'the Neck'). The route weaves through the city and involves summiting a couple of Auckland's larger volcanos.

Our walk began on the eastern coast, just a couple of blocks from our apartment. The first main 'attraction' was Albert Park. Adjacent to the University of Auckland campus, this park has plenty of mature trees (Justin's favourite) for climbing or studying under. This one was the most mature:

We then walked over to Auckland's answer to central park: the Domain. This park is the home to the Auckland Museum, as well as several sports fields. We still haven't seen anyone playing frisbee here, but there's always some sort of cricket going on.

The Auckland Museum:

We're saving the museum for a rainy day, but we did check out the Wintergardens, two large greenhouses nestled into a corner of the park. Emma spent a good fifteen minutes taking photos of lilypads here.

They were very photogenic.

The walk then took us to Mt. Eden, the tallest volcano in Auckland. There was some sort of touristy cultural event going on, which we may have interrupted. We figured that this interruption would probably just add to the appeal for the tourists. Mt Eden offered some great views of downtown Auckland, and also had a pretty neat crater (although craters are starting to feel a little passe).

Justin patiently waited for an eruption, to no avail.

After Mt. Eden, the walk started to become typical Kiwi. By that, I mean disorganized and poorly signposted.  Up until this point in the walk, there had been nice yellow markers on almost every block, pointing us in the correct direction. We knew that we needed to get to Cornwall Park, and we could see which direction we needed to walk (towards the distant obelisk), but when we descended, the markers became few and far between. 

Naturally, Justin had a map, but New Zealand foiled us once again by having street signs that pointed in the wrong direction (this could only happen here). After some superb orienteering, we managed to get on track again. We decided that all of our extra walking entitled us to an ice cream at our next stop: Cornwall Park.

Cornwall Park is a massive park ensconcing a hill, called One Tree Hill (not to be confused with the previously popular WB TV show, although the show actually got its name from the Hill in a roundabout sort of way...or so says Wikipedia). The Hill itself actually has hundreds of trees, although it was apparently named for one in particularly. This 'One Tree' has actually been chopped down numerous times, most recently by Maori activists, lending the nickname 'None Tree Hill'.

The highlight of our walk through One Tree Hill was the bold sheep. These sheep seem to be used to humans meandering through their fields, and are not nearly as timid as most. This one had a prolonged staring competition with Justin. We finally decided to move on. A hundred feet later, we looked back, and the sheep was still staring at him.

More sheep:

Following Cornwall Park, the signposts reappeared, and we made it fairly painlessly to the West coast.

More to come soon about our weekend spent in the caldera of NZ's largest volcano, and our Hobbit-esque trek up Mt Doom.