Half-Day Around Auckland and North to Paihia

22/10


After spending the morning having breakfast, returning the car, doing email, and working on the blog, we met our tour guide at noon--Ian Shirley of New Zealand Personal Tours--and took off for our half-day of touring Auckland.

We started by going to Mt. Eden. Auckland has 27 extinct volcanoes dotted throughout the city. Mt. Eden offers gorgeous views of the City of Sails.

Auckland is built on and around 48 volcanoes. One Tree Hill,the largest of Auckland's extinct volcanoes, was the site of an early Maori settlement.

Mt. Eden is the highest volcano on the Auckland isthmus. Rangitoto Island has an even better vista. This volcano emerged from the sea just 600 years ago, no doubt much to the wonder of the Maori people living next door on Motutapu Island. It is thought that Maori settled on the volcanoes beginning in the 14th century, taking advantage of the fertile soils. There's evidence that in the 16th century, the Maori used the cones as defensive pa (fortified villages). Evidence of complex earthworks can be seen on Mt. Eden and One Tree Hill where Maori cleared volcanic stone to develop garden plots and form the terraces that are features of pa.

The Parnell Rose Garden was quite beautiful. Because it’s so early in the spring here, not many roses were already blooming but we did see some. The grass in between the rows of bushes was the most glorious green, and there were NO SPRINKLERS that we could see.. Mom spent a fair amount of time sniffing the flowers that were there. This was the most beautiful rose. Notice a friend crawling on the flower?

We then crossed the Harbour Bridge and went up to Mt. Victoria. Mt. Victoria is also an extinct volcano and was once the site of a 'disappearing gun', a large piece of artillery placed there because Kiwis were worried about Russian invasion in 1899.

After a quick lunch of croissant sandwiches in Devenport, we had a driving tour of Auckland’s mansions overlooking the harbour on our way to the lookout above Piha Beach. Piha Beach is on the Tasman Sea, so we got our first glimpse of that mighty body of water.

Ian then wound the van up and up and up a windy, narrow road (which seems to be the only kind here in New Zealand) to the Takeri Rainforest Visitor’s Center. We saw a statue of a Moa! Moa’s were hunted to extinction by the Maoris. They were HUGE, flightless birds. Kind of like Ostriches.

This is a photo frame they have hanging there to frame the view. Quite clever.

Then it was off to the airport to pick up the rest of the Heuers and our drive to Paihia. We arrived in Paihia about 10pm with a carload of zombies. We were soooooooooooo tired!

Our room at the Paihia Scenic Circle Hotel was lovely. It had an enormous pointed ceiling of some kind of timber planks. Very tropical. Mom was so exhausted, she didn’t care that she couldn’t find her PJs or figure out how to plug in her CPAP. We just crashed as soon as we could.