Tree planting

The Maths Department here is wonderfully laid back and friendly. Last week, we got a license to take Friday off work when the head of department suggested a tree-planting day on Wahieke Island. This actually seems quite a common Kiwi event - they realise that their carbon footprint is huge, but have no intention to travel less, so just plant trees instead.

Anyway, I spent a very enjoyable afternoon running up and down a hill with a wheelbarrow full (on the way down, at least) of mulch. The shovelling of which is demonstrated by these two energetic members of the department:


After the tree-planting was finished, we walked around the coast and ended, as is becoming very normal for a Friday evening in Auckland, with drinks, courtesy of the Maths Department.

Blood red sky

One thing it's very hard to miss when you arrive in Auckland is the newest volcano on the block, Rangitoto:


Only 600 years old, the name derives from the Maori phrase Te Rangi totongia a Tamatekapua, meaning `the day the blood of Tamatekapua was shed'. Tamatekapua was the chief of one of the first Maori canoes to arrive on New Zealand with Polynesian settlers. Apparantely they thought his death more violent than perhaps it was...

Anyway, ever since we'd arrived, I'd been itching to climb it, so last Sunday we headed out on an early morning ferry. Although from afar the island appears to be covered in quite heavy woodland, being such a new bit of land, there are lots of areas of bare lava field, and apparently the forest is only about 200 years old.

The hike to the top took less than an hour; on the way we got to explore some lava caves - nothing too claustrophobic but you definitely needed to take a torch.

The views from the top were amazing, both back towards the city:


and out the other way into the bay:

"winter"

I'd hoped to find kite surfing here, after seeing some at the Oregon coast. As it happens, it didn't take long. Even in winter, about 6 blocks from home:

I've also been told about a local place that rents gear and gives lessons, which brings me to another item. Kiwis are absurdly friendly. It's fantastic. My running tally so far: days in NZ = 19, unfriendly kiwis = 0.

Shaxspere

The previously mentioned visit to "Shakespear Park" piqued my curiosity about the missing "e". A bit of research/googling seems to indicate that not only was lack of spelling standardization a bit of an issue at the time, but that many of the alternate spellings propagated outside of London. See this for the surprisingly long list of alternatives.

Of course, considering I've used the word "googling" and the googol/google story, a bit of spelling variation really shouldn't be surprising.

Shakespear Park

As the day for returning our hire car was rapidly approaching, on Sunday we decided to drive out of Auckland a little bit. We found ourselves at Shakespear Park, at the end of the Whangaparoa penisula.



It's unclear if the Kiwis just can't spell, or whether they are referring to someone other than the great bard. Either way, the park was just the place for a quiet stroll on a Sunday afternoon. It had something of an English feel about it - gentle rolling hills, and of course, as we knew had to happen sooner or later, sheep:


What was less expected was the appearance of some incredibly tame peacocks, including this one, who decided he was most definitely going to `shake his tailfeathers' at us.

Extreme edge

Faced with a rainy and wintry Saturday afternoon, we decided to try out Extreme Edge - which claims to be the largest climbing gym in Australasia. And it is indeed large, with a wide selection of difficulties of routes to try (very handily colour coded) and large sections of overhangs specifically for lead climbing, which would be quite impressive to watch. They have an extremely foolproof belay system, which is nice for beginners, allowing almost no possible way for you to drop your friends off the wall. The grading system of difficulty of climbs here is different from the US, which was my first excuse for giving up halfway up the wall on several occasions, but in the end it just turns out that after two months of doing nothing, my arms just can't take it anymore.

Two days, two volcanoes

Hello and welcome to our blog. We're hoping to use this to write about all our adventures in New Zealand - hiking, biking, skiing and the like. Hopefully this will keep some of you back home up to date on what we've been up to and may also be useful for those of you who come to visit!

As yet, our main adventure has been house-hunting, but we've had time to do a little walking. Auckland is built on more than 50 volcanoes, and in the past two days we've been up two of them.

This is the view from the top of Mount Victoria in Devonport across to Rangitoto - Auckland's newest volcano. The strange mushroom things we believe to be airvents from underneath... for something...



And this is the view from the top of Mount Eden, across the town where you can see several more volcanoes sticking up above the houses.


Let's just hope none of them suddenly decide to become active again...