Coast to Coast

Today was the Coast to Coast day! One of my roommates, Erika, and I got a decently early start to our day on the Coast to Coast trail. Erika is a teacher from Calgary taking a year to stay with family and see the sights in Australia, plus this month in New Zealand. And we had so many *bonding* experiences today, which you'll hear about later, and because we have such good *chemistry,* we've decided to travel up to the North together! Back to this morning, the Coast to Coast trail stretches across Auckland and its many suburbs, and allows one to reach both the West and East coasts of the country after 16km of TRAMPING!! We started our journey, running up hill so steep it was hill-arious, to reach a bus stop where we planned to bus to the West coast in Onehunga (please don't ask me to pronounce that, the bus drivers did… several times:)). We arrived… at the wrong bus stop, but got a friendly lift to the right one, which promptly got into a dramatic accident with a sign post. We're in good health, as are all the rest of the fine passengers, and the bus and the sign will probably recover with some help. A new bus and a winding tour through the suburbs later, we turned up in Onehuanga, dipped out toes in the West water and started East! The trail was well marked with little blue signs which we followed faithfully through strange random rainshowers, etc.. I wont retrace every step, but highlights include: getting a real taste of Auckland-area housing and life outside of the CBD; seeing some rugby; the University of Auckland; fountains; amazing trees and what I'm pretty sure was every, very-green park in Auckland! Our first large park was One Tree Hill/Cornwall Park where baaaaaaa, we were greeted by our first New Zealand sheepies roaming throughout the park!!! Our next park, Mt. Eden, was the incredible, grassy remnants of a volcano crater which also offered a fantastic view of the Auckland area, which is a surprisingly sprawling, and well put together area - not AUCKward at all! My geoloving self got my first taste of the super interesting features of NZ first hand at the crater, and then learned all about them at our next stop, the Aukland Museum! Located along our route in, you guessed it, another park (this one featuring innumerable cricket pitches), the museum had great Maori artifacts (super fascinating with amazing carvings), displays on New Zealand wildlife, geography, war history and more! Belated Anzac Day, by the way. Next, we finally made it to the harbour, mission accomplished! Then, plus some groceries, we were hostel-bound to crash and visit with our German roommates who are appalled we don't know the game Ludo? Northward we go tomorrow!

Proud, NZ sheep! (not sheepish at all)

 Maori meeting house where wood meets beauty

'Nough said. Personally, I think I'm in a great spot!