We are staying at the Mercure Hotel in Auckland. It's in the city centre very close to the harbor. One of several in the Aukland area. Quick geography: New Zealand is made up of two islands. The northern one is the most populated. Auckland, itself, sits on top of 52 extinct volcanos, which at the moment are warn away. It makes for a hilly setting. Auckland is really on an isthmus, hence the several harbors. Ours faces the Pacific, the other side faces the Tasman Sea. Auckland is in the upper third of the northern island. Enough for now.
When we got to the hotel there weren't any rooms available for some time. After the peculiar night, we began to wander around to see what we could see. Lots of coffee shops around here. Given that the weather is a little like San Francisco, I can see coffee shops as a good idea. The trouble is that they close at 5:30 in the evening, and we needed something for a dinner. We did find a burger shop in the end.
The ferry building. It's around the corner from our hotel.
Near the harbor and our hotel. We were looking for dinner spots - for the exhausted.
Me at the harbor - note ferry building in the background.
At noon they had a room for us - merciful - we must have looked pathetic. At 12:10 the Bush and Beach tour company picked us up for a nature tour of the region. By this point we were almost OK. One of the first things they did for us was to go to a suburb of Auckland called Titirangi. We stopped at a bakery, and to our delight, found that the Kiwis love meat pies. So do we!! I got a chicken pie
and Charlie got a Steak and pepper. FANTASTIC. The pies almost brought us back to human.
The front of the Arataki visitor's center.
Our first actual stop was the Arataki Visitors center. I didn't realize when I was here last (18 years ago) how strongly the Maori influence was here. There's even a Maori station on TV. The views from the top were wonderful. Over 50 years ago they began building dams to collect water for Auckland. We could see them from up here.
Dam in the foreground - Tasman Sea behind
View back to the city from Arataki
Huge fern behind Charlie. The bush has many of these.
Our next stop was Karekare beach - or close to it in the bush. One of my favorite scenes from a movie was from The Piano. First scene is the head character and her daughter dropped off on a forbidding beach with pounding waves - that was filmed at Karekare beach. We visited some waterfalls instead. Too hard to get to the beach.
Charlie and I near one of the waterfalls we stopped to see near Karekare beach.
Our next stop was Piha beach. This one we could get to. We took a bush walk here too. Lots of ancient looking ferns - silver ferns (New Zealand's national plant), Nikau, world most southern palm, and lots of others. The forests (bush) around here look like a dinosaur might take a stroll with us.
Gorgeous teak tree along stroll near Karekare beach.
Our Piha bush walk included a Silver Fern - the national plant of New Zealand
We spotted a wood pigeon in a New Zealand palm tree (a Nikau). These are rather large birds
This tree is a Rata. It begins as a seedling at the top of another tree. Gradually over time it grows downward until it hits the ground. Once there it embeds a root system around the original tree, absorbing all the nutrients and kills its host. The tunnel above was where the old tree had been.
An overlook over Piha beach and the lion
Me on the beach. The sands are dark grey. When a magnet was dipped into the sand, it came up covered in magnetic, black sand.
Charlie on the beach at Piha. The two flags were the area where it was considered safe to swim - not too much.
Finally we went to the bush on the way home to look at a 100 year old Kauri tree. The Kauri is one of the oldest trees on the planet - like the California Sequoia. It only grows in the top 1/3 of the northern island of New Zealand. It's got very hard wood with no flaws and was prized for masts, building materials and lots of other things. It's a kind of pine. It was almost lumbered out of existence and now a fungus that attacking it. On several of our bush walks we had to wash the bottoms of our shoes to kill any possible fungus.
The Kauri tree.
We got back to the hotel. Staggered out for a burger. Crashed at 8:45. The time here is LA minus three hours + one day.
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