Storyline: Home to home westward
Auckland is a very pretty, walkable city and we loved it. Planning our trip, I must have consulted with naysayers who thought there wasn’t much to do there. We could have easily spent a week here walking the many trails, visiting the museums and art galleries and exploring the culinary offerings.
Arriving at the airport at 8am, we breezed through it in no time. First, we stopped by the Vodafone booth in the duty-free area and bought a 30-day SIM card for $25 NZ. Next up: customs and immigration. We had some gift-size bottles of maple syrup, a pack of coffee and a pack of tea. Although this is not considered food in Canada, we had read that these may be inspected at NZ customs and had to be declared. Alex’s more than 3-months supply of medications had to be declared too. I showed the customs officer a photo of our maple syrup on our phone. He then went through his prohibited foods checklist: eggs? – no, meat? – no, vegetables? – no. “Do you actually have any real food?” he then asked – nope. And off we went. Alex was directed to counter # 5, where he explained that he has prescribed heart medications for the duration of our travel, and that was it. This all, from disembarking, through waiting for our bags, to going through customs & immigration and then buying tickets for the Skybus to the city centre took no longer than 40 min. We had arranged to drop off our bags at the apartment at 11am (the check-out time for the previous guests), get the keys and wander around while the cleaners were working on it, until our check-in time at 2pm. After about half an hour on the bus we were still in town before 9:30am. And so, we parked ourselves and our bags in a café across from the apartment, and waited for 11am to roll around.
First impressions – downtown Auckland (known locally as the Central Business District, or CBD) looked a lot like downtown Toronto. But aside from exactly the same new high-rise buildings, probably designed and built by the same Chinese construction company, Auckland is much prettier.
We ended up in the Wynyard area – lots of restaurants and patios – and had a lunch there. Ceviche and seafood tacos, home-made roasted potatoes and wine.
By the time we eventually got back to our apartment, it was about 50 hours since we had left home, with very little sleep along the way. Got to admit, we were flagging a bit.
Auckland is probably the hilliest city of this size that we have walked through. Many European cities are built on hills; however, Auckland is spread between the Pacific to the east and the Tasman Sea to the west. It is easy to walk from park to park, uphill, downhill and up again. We missed Karekare Beach where “The Piano” was filmed (just a bit too far on foot, but we could have taken public transportation or tour). I was looking forward to the walk through the park and beach, but a South Island west coast weather-related emergency situation resulted in us taking most of a day to redraw our itinerary and get all the bookings updated.
We did the 16km coast-to-coast walk on our first full day. Adding Alex’s dad’s shortcuts (I learned from the best – A), we walked close to 30km and then we took the commuter train back downtown.
The walk starts at the Waitemata Harbour about 15 min from home. We passed the Albert Park in University area,
Auckland Domain – a 200-acre city park containing museums, memorials and the entire blast crater of the Pukekawa volcano. We thought hard about visiting the War Museum at the summit and decided it was too late if we were to complete the 16km walk. We’d come back the next day.
When Alex’s dad’s shortcuts got us a little turned around, I followed my nose and sorted the things out. We had a few heated discussions about directions but it was me who won.
The best one was after we climbed up all the way to the Summit of Mount Eden (Maunga-whau) – another ancient volcano. It was past midday and we were hungry. Alex was getting anxious to get us down towards the next viewpoint.
Since we had climbed steep stairs, he thought the road would take us over another road going downhill the opposite direction.
I was seeing the coast on the other side, along with other landmarks. To his surprise (more like relief, I’d say – A) we descended onto a path right into the sign “Coast-to-coast walk” pointing us in the right direction. It was time to stop for lunch in the Eden Park area.
We were so hungry that literally walked into the first place we saw and had a pleasant Japanese-style snack. Just to find out later that next door was a lovely Belgian beer pub. Oh well, can’t try them all, can we?
From there our trail took us a few kilometres through beautiful, mature Cornwall park. “Sir John Logan Campbell gifted Cornwall Park to New Zealand in 1901. His wish was that the park be free for every New Zealander to enjoy, forever.” (http://cornwallpark.co.nz/about)
We didn’t have time to climb One Tree Hill (Maungakiekie), a 182-metre (597 ft) volcanic peak. By then we had already done over 20km, it was getting late and we still didn’t know how we’d return.
So, we pushed on following the ancient lava flows through the Onehunga suburb, and again with a few “shortcuts” eventually ended at Manukau Harbour on the Tasman Sea,
spent some time walking on the beaches and taking photos. Google Maps came in handy. It showed us that there was a train station some 750 metres away. The train took us back to the CBD in half an hour.
Our next day is already chronicled in the previous post. Except the end of it. After re-routing our New Zealand itinerary, we walked back to Wynyard to find a restaurant and the fish market.
I had 2 glasses ($6 each) of really good local white and Alex two local beers, accompanied by amazing French fries (2 portions), roasted mushrooms and grilled shrimps. I deserved it after wading through the booking revamp. But this was not the end of our day’s story.
After the drinks we walked through the fish market and ran into a lad who showed us around.
He also gave a good price for the fish on this photo saying that they will filet it and skin it for free. Alex suggested this would be next morning’s breakfast and so it was.
Since we arrived, we have not completely adjusted to the time. We’re not exactly jet-lagged, but are getting up at around 4:30 AM. Next morning Alex went for night shots (photographs, not alcoholic drinks – A) and came back with the filet of fish and a half dozen thoroughly fresh oysters, at a morning discount price.
Fish for breakfast and oysters with dinner? That was our last day. After breakfast we walked back to the harbour with the intention of walking one of the bike trails towards Mission bay.
We didn’t quite finish the trail, and shortly after noon turned, or sooner climbed into the Parnell area searching for a lunch place.
Alex again was starving and we walked into Rosie’s, the first one we ran into (Google got us to this one and we already had an idea about its cuisine). Glad we did. Mmmm – ceviche, steak tartar and roasted potatoes with garlic (sorry, Stuart). Although I preferred the ceviche in Lima and Buenos Aires, Alex says this was the best ceviche he has had. Perhaps because it wasn’t too lemony. On our way to home we bought a bottle of local chardonnay for the oysters. It went down really fast and was a good help for my packing.
We tend to think of Toronto as a multi-cultural city. However, in recent years it is becoming visibly segregated with many closed communities that do not intersect. Auckland is a multicultural city, where from what we observed, people live together. In the restaurants we sampled, both menus and staff were of mixed origin. In Toronto we have Indian cuisine, where the staff is all of Indian origin, Chinese cuisine, with Chinese staff, and so on. Not here. It is a city where we observed that people and cultures have integrated. We hope that we are right in our conclusion.
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