Springtime

Spring has arrived in Auckland, with one noticeable feature being the blooming of flowers in Albert Park, which we walk through each day on our way to work. In addition, the fig tree outside our house is starting to get leaves, and the peach tree is starting to get flowers. Why it wants flowers before leaves I don't fully understand, but then I'm not a botanist.





This fern wasn't in Albert Park, but on a hike we did at Muriwai last weekend. Very New Zealand...

Skiing

One of the best things about living in Auckland is that there's skiing four and a half hours away.

And one of the most annoying things about living in Auckland is that it's four and a half hours to skiing... it tempts you into thinking that you can ski for two days over a weekend, and somehow make it back to work on Monday without being completely exhausted. Which is not to say it's not worth it, as we've done it before, and no doubt we'll do it again...

We last went down to Ruapehu at the end of last season we skied at Turoa, on the south side of the mountain. This time we also spent a day at Whakapapa, on the north side, which has a more Alpine character, and a view of Mount "Doom" Ngauruhoe.

The weather was fantastic, although the snow was pretty icy. We tried a couple of the blacks, but many of them were just ice sheets under a small covering of powder. We ignored the "extreme terrain" signs only the once... and the double-blacks were entirely cordoned off.

The Routeburn

More visitors means more excuses to visit other parts of New Zealand. Oliver and Marie rented a camper van and spent two weeks driving from here to the South Island; we flew down to Queenstown to meet them and do the Routeburn hike with them.


The Routeburn track is one of nine Great Walks in New Zealand which are well-marked and serviced with huts, meaning one doesn't have to carry a tent, which is nice.

The walk takes three days, and we had great weather for days one and three. Day two, which was entirely above the tree line, was rainy and cloudy. Luckily there were enough breaks in the trees on day three that we were able to glimpse similar views to those we had missed the day before.


After we finished we took a bus to Milford Sound (which by the way, is not a sound, it's a fjord) and we were just in time to catch the last boat trip of the day.

Mount Taranaki

Looking back on it, I can't quite remember why we decided it would be a good idea to try and climb Mount Taranaki, but for some reason it seemed like a fun weekend plan, and so last Friday night we set off on the five hour drive south of Auckland to the Taranaki region.

My first thought on seeing the volcano from the distance was `That is a gigantic mountain, there's no way we can climb to the top of that in a day'.

Various sources had told us it could take anywhere between five (very optimistic, and probably involving mountain running) and ten hours to get up and down, so having checked with the visitor centre that the weather was predicted to be fine, we set off at 9am on Saturday morning.

Everything started well, although after a couple of hours the top didn't really seem to be getting any closer, and the route up the mountain had stopped being nicely worn paths and turned into a huge slope of scree. As we slowly gained altitude the level of snow cover increased to rather more than we'd been expecting. Whilst we didn't suffer from the cold at all, it turns out that hiking up 20% inclines covered in several feet of snow is no easy task.

We'd been warned that the crater rim would be dangerously icy, which it was in parts, but in many places, the ice formations reminded me somewhat of Superman's palace. Here's a photo of the view over the crater rim to Mount Ruapehu on the right and Mount "Doom" Ngauruhoe on the left.

And then finally, after four and a half hours hard slog, we made it to the top:

Map my run

Until now, I've been using a combination of gmap pedometer and the ipod Nike plus adapter to keep track of my running training (which has tailed off somewhat recently). However, I've just stumbled across the Map my Run website, and it looks at first glance to be quite neat, and possibly rather addictive. You can plot routes just as in gmap pedometer, with an added bonus that you can go back and edit routes if you realise you've made a mistake. There's also a training calendar to log runs, and you don't just have to run, you can bike or hike instead.

But my most favourite feature so far is that for each route, it will show you the elevation as you go along. Very cool.

The good ship

The Bay of Islands is a very nice area of New Zealand a few hours drive north of here. It's very good for sailing, and we're vaguely planning a trip to charter a boat for a week next summer. On our first trip up there a couple of weeks ago we spent a day sailing on the good ship R. Tucker Thompson.



After sailing out to deserted island in the bay, we swam to shore and hiked up the hill with tremendous views. After a BBQ lunch back on the ship, we had the chance to climb the rigging... scarier than it looked when the crew did it, I have to say.

Yacht Racing

There are a few things that kiwis seem to take very seriously, as a nation, to the point that they field truly world-class efforts despite a population only a shade over 4m. Rugby, to be sure -- but also yacht racing.

Over the past few weeks, the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series has been staged here in Auckland. The LVPS is a bit like the America's Cup, but with fewer lawyers and more actual sailing, or so I've been led to believe. The litigation level involved with the America's cup now seems to preclude the involvement of any actual water, or sailing, or boats. So the LVPS is "America's Cup-class".

It turns out that as a spectator sport, yacht racing leaves something to be desired. I attempted to watch on 3 days of the regatta -- on the first, there was no racing as the wind was too light; on the second, there was only one race, of which I only managed to see the last 10 seconds, before the remainder of the day was canceled because the wind was too strong; and the third day was by far the worst day, weather-wise, of the entire summer, so I sat inside and watched it on tv. That turned out to be a good choice, because even when they do actually race, the delays between races are almost unbearable. But, in between all the delays, there was some pretty decent racing, the result of which was a 3-1 win for NZ. So my future plan, and advice for spectators: hope for good weather, and bring beer.