Auckland: Coast to Coast Tramp, 20 kms, 25C, Cloudy

Ok, Now Don't Get Too Excited:

First, your morning sunrise...I've missed these:-)

Not a spectacular sunrise, but it was the only sun we saw today until 18:00, so noteworthy for that reason. To bed very early last night, both experiencing a very choppy night, but ready to go this morning! There's no time to waste!!

When we arrived here Annemarie found us a walk...it's actually called 'tramping' here. The Coast to Coast trail. Now don't get too excited my walking friends, the UK Coast to Coast this is not! That said, I'm pretty sure the UK route doesn't have three volcanic cones to cross over, and besides, it always rains there...or so I'm told. We headed out this morning at a most leisurely hour of 9:30 and headed of without much of a map in search of Mt. Eden, the first volcanic climb on the tramp. The idea was to climb to the top in search of free views of Auckland...the tower in the distance costs about $30 per person and the volcano climb...for me, priceless!

As you can see, there are volcanic peaks all over Auckland...23 to be exact, but let's not let this old geographer get started on that subject! As we climbed we picked up the trail, and I must say that there are not very many arrows on this route. We often had to guess and back track to find our way. Nothing new in that as urban routes are often difficult to locate. We are following the blue signs, the yellow signs take the walker in the opposite direction. One of the survival skills learned on Camino is to locate the flecha amarillo, yellow arrows...as you can imagine, by now we are becoming fairly skilled in this department and we managed to find our way most of the time.

The second volcano is very subtle, but within its broad crater it is home to Auckland's cricket fields, and this being Sunday, they were in full use. As you can see there is an old review stand. As we later learned during our visit to the quite excellent Auckland War Memorial Museum, this area was used to parade the NZ troups before the Boar War and WWI. It has since been used for many historical events. The museum itself is located on the west rim of the volcano and I've covered our visit in "High Endeavours".

After our museum visit the route crosses through some beautiful gardens, and if you are sitting in a Canadian winter you might wish to skip this section, or perhaps the sight of flowers will cheer you up. You decide.

The trail then led us through the rambling University of Auckland, housed in many new and colonial styled buildings. A beautiful urban campus where smoking is not permitted anywhere...very progressive.

More gardens...

Then just when we're thinking that we were finished...we lost the trail and never did find it again...two blocks from the west side of the island! 

We climbed back over the third volcano home where I sit drinking a very nice glass of NZ Marlborough Sacred Hill pinot gris while Annemarie cooks me dinner...very nice! Tomorrow we plan to go a tramping around Rangitoto Island, another volcanic peak, but this time it's located off shore (see Annemarie's photo). How cool will that be?!!