Tramping around Auckland!

Hello everyone,

I hope you are all doing well. I decided that it's been a few days so I should update you all on what is going on down under in New Zealand! I have officially been in Auckland for 1 week and 2 days but it feels like so much longer! I am slowly getting used to daily life here and what it is like to actually be living in Auckland. Just some basic stuff: it has been in the mid 70s on most days and normally is sunny (although it does randomly rain sometimes throughout the day) and I'm still wearing lots of sunscreen. Cars are still driving on the left side of the road, but I am getting a little more used to watching out for cars (although it still freaks me out). Oh and I meant to write this last time, but apparently I had gotten the time difference wrong and it is actually that I am 6 hours behind you but a day ahead (if that makes sense) or 18 hours ahead of you. So anyways here we go:

Friday January 8th (or as the Kiwis would say: 8 January)
On Fridays most people in the program do not have classes so we decided to go on another adventure. Auckland is surrounded by a ton of tiny islands – some more habitable than others. In fact, most of the islands are volcanoes (are you catching on to a theme here?) and within Auckland there are somewhere between 46-52 volcanoes (depending on who you ask). They are all dormant but none of them are considered to be extinct. Anyways, we woke up early and went to an island called Waiheke. It was about a 35 minute ferry ride away. Waiheke is a truly beautiful island. There are a ton of hiking (or as New Zealanders call it: tramping) trails along it so we picked up a map and after consulting with some locals, set off on our tramping adventure. We went on a coastal hike which took us all around the outside of the island. Once again, I did not know which way to look: on one side was beautiful water with an incredible view of the many islands surrounding Waiheke, and on the other side were beautiful mountains, hills and vineyards. The tramp was very intense – it was a lot of hiking up and down steep areas and the path was SO narrow that when you left it, the tall grass just went back to where it was. While it was hard, the spectacular views from the top completely made it worth it. Up there, it really felt like I was on top of the world with no one else around – it was very peaceful and just stunning (I know, I’m repeating myself with all of the “beautiful” synonyms but I just don’t know how else to describe it!). The hike ended up taking 6 hours!!! After the coastal hike we were trying to get around to the other side of the island which has one of the most gorgeous beaches in New Zealand. Along the way we ended up climbing and scaling over some rocks, wandered onto a private beach where a helicopter was taking off, walked by a nude beach and a couple sheep! Also, on the side of one of the roads we saw a table filled with different types of jam and a container asking people to put money for the jam inside – it blew my mind how trusting the New Zealand society was that these people were not afraid that others were steal from them. Someone on the trip bought kiwi jam and it was really delicious. We finally made it to the Onetangi beach around 5:30 and the sun was still brightly shining. The beach was really beautiful and the water was so refreshing after the long hike. We hung out there for a bit then caught a bus and the ferry to get back to Auckland. Lets just say that I was completely exhausted after the day long hike but it was so worth it! If you are really interested in the hike (and seeing some of the views) that I did here is a link to a map of Waiheke: http://www.ki-wi.co.nz/map.htm If you look all the way to the middle left where the yellow line ends that is where the ferry dropped us off. We tramped North so up and around the coast along the water to get to Oneroa, then we hiked along the roads through some vineyards to get to Palm Beach (which is where we saw the naked beach and scaled some rocks) then we hiked a combination of along the coast, trails and roads to reach Onetangi Beach. As you see there are so many beautiful coves and it was quite the tramp!

Saturday January 9th
On Saturday the BU program planned a bus tour around Auckland for us but it was run through GOOT. GOOT stands for Get Out Of Town and is a travel company in NZ that makes it so you get great discounts without having to book through travel agents. Online they have a bunch of different places, routes and things to do all over NZ and they gave us a booklet with tons of discount vouchers and the "GOOT game" which basically has a bunch of different activities to do and they have prizes for winners. The person running the GOOT tour is actually one of my geography professors who just did my lecture this morning. Anyway so we were supposed to meet at 9 to get on the bus and my program director is really intense about time so after waiting 10 minutes we ended up leaving a couple people behind because they were late - lets just say I'm so happy I was on time! We first went to Missionary Bay which is one of the local beaches in Auckland about a 10/15 minute bus ride away. It's possible to bike or run to the beach and gives you a nice view of Auckland and surrounding volcanoes/islands. We then went up Mt Eden which is the largest volcano in Auckland. On top of Mt Eden you can see ALL of Auckland and it's just awesome up there! At the bottom of the crater on top of Mt Eden someone had written "I <3 U" in stones which was pretty funny. After admiring the view, we were off again. This time we went to Waitakere Ranges Regional Park. Auckland has 26 Regional Parks around it which has tramping trails and places you can picnic. We went on a 30ish minute hike around and got to see a Kauri tree (one of the big trees that NZ is famous for) and walk around the forest. It was cool to be in the forest because that it was all of NZ used to look like before humans started changing it. There were some rivers flowing through it and even a little water fall! It was such a nice area and really close to where I'm living! After the regional park we went to the black sand dunes. The black sand was INCREDIBLY hot (I kept my sneakers on) but it was beautiful. We walked through the sand and made it to a lake which overlooked a hill with some horses and cows. We stopped there to eat lunch and some of us went swimming. The water was incredibly refreshing and the sand was really cool! It was very thick and you could put it on yourself (which I totally did!). Then we went back to the sand to a HUGE sand dune and we could go sand dune jumping. The sand dune overlooked a river and it was pretty high up, but you just jump a bit before falling into the sand. I watched some people do it and was really scared but I ended up trying it. What you have to do is start far away and spring to what looks like the edge of the dune, jump out and then fall back. Logically I knew that there was sand across the dune but when you're running at the edge it really does seem like it just drops off! I did not jump that far but some people jumped down 9 and 10 meters! We then all ran down the sand dune into the river (which was really really shallow) and walked back to the bus. We then drove a couple of minutes to get to the black sand beach where we had 15 minutes to run out, look at the beach and run back on the bus. The beach was really beautiful with huge mountains surrounding it but once again the sand was insanely hot! We then went back on the bus and drove out to Cooper Creek winery. We had a wine tasting there (where I actually found a couple types of wine that I really like). The vineyard was really nice and it was a really nice end to the day. One of the things which was great about the day was that I was able to see so much of what was around Auckland and that there are so many very different things to do within 30 minutes from downtown!

Sunday January 10th
Since it is still so bright in NZ all the time, a couple of us decided to get up around 9 and go try to find this French Market. We walked around Parnell Rise which is a street that is really close to the UniLodge which has a bunch of cafes. While we weren't able to actually find the French Market (apparently it's only open on Saturday) it was still fun to explore a different part of Auckland and a way for me to figure out where everything is in relation to each other. On our way back we walked by a big sports arena that said "Heineken Open" so figuring it was something related to tennis, I decided to go inside to look around for a match schedule. The man who worked there that I ran into informed me they were still figuring out the schedule (the tournament was due to start the next day) but that a lot of the big tennis players were practicing on the courts now and we were welcome to walk around and watch for free. We saw the big arena with 2 players practicing and some practice courts with other players. We were able to get really close which was cool and it was a great way to eat lunch. Unfortunately I do not know which players I saw but if you are interested feel free to look at: http://www.heinekenopen.co.nz/1/home/ The arena is really close to the UniLodge and I think it's a really good place to know about. After that I spent most of the rest of the day doing errands. I got hiking (or tramping) boots and the guy who was helping me was so fascinated by my American accent which I thought was funny because I find New Zealand accents to be much cooler. Another thing I have noticed about New Zealanders who I have come into contact with is that they are very knowledgeable about the US and are constantly asking about our different presidents and foreign affairs - I kind of wish I had brought my AP US History textbook to NZ instead of reading about NZ before I came! Anyways one of my roommates really like cooking all the time so she made us a really delicious salmon and the rest of us helped with the rice and broccoli. Then I had my first experience with New Zealand laundry. Their washing machines are SO much smaller than the ones I've experienced in the US - they are very shallow! The dryers are a pretty good size though and I guess as long as the job gets done it doesn't matter too much. My roommates and I also watched the movie "snatch" in the UniLodge theater which was fun.

Monday January 11th
I had class again starting on Monday and am trying to realize that I am actually a student here with work to do and that this is not just a vacation. Luckily my geography class is only Tuesday and Wednesday so I had the morning to buy a sleeping bag (way more expensive here) and get my 18+ ID card (so I don't have to keep carrying my passport around!). Then we had class, my roommate made homemade mac & cheese (yumm!) and I went off to the library to try to do some reading. However, the library closes at 10 pm here so I didn't get a lot of work done at all.

Today hasn't been that exciting either. I had class this morning and now I am updating the blog before my next class. I am going to try to figure out how to upload pictures so hopefully I will update this blog really soon with my pictures link!

I would love to hear from you all and hope you are enjoying the blog! Let me know if you have questions or anything!

Miss and love you all a lot!