Don and I are always looking for opportunities to see other parts of New Zealand, so soon after we arrived we arranged an exchange with the two Resident Friends who volunteer at the Friends Centre in Auckland. One of them coincidentally had worked with us at Woodbrooke in Birmingham England last summer and they were happy to have a chance to spend some time in Wellington. So for the last two weeks we have enjoyed the sights of a city that is very nice, but very different from Wellington. It is further north and therefore a little warmer and less windy, and it is about 3 times the size, with a population of 1.3 million.


The Friends Centre up there is very lovely having just been totally renovated and updated about 3 years ago. It sits in a city suburb called Mt. Eden, about a 35 minute walk from the city center, but having its own little shopping area of quaint stores and coffee shops. Although we were very busy with work when we were up there (25 "guest nights" in 2 weeks), we did manage time to explore the city, see lots of great sights and sip a few cups of coffee.


Auckland sits between 2 harbors and among over 50 volcanoes. The last big eruption there was 600 years ago, although there are still some classified as active, including Mt. Eden. We figured if there was an eruption while we were staying in Auckland, we’d be "Pompeii-ed", immortalized forever in frozen shapes. I was surprised how grassy and calm the crater looked. Cows are "rented" to graze the crater so that there’s no need to mow. They used to use sheep, but apparently they are too easy to steal for a mutton dinner, so now the city only uses cows whose only danger is in being tipped.


Auckland seems to have a large number of beautiful small parks and we enjoyed a few walks in them, either with the Tuesday morning walking group or on our own, enjoying the unique New Zealand birds and flora. Luckily we had some folks with us who knew a bit about what we were seeing because it all looked so unfamiliar to us. One of the strangest birds we saw was the pukeko in which the female has almost gangly legs, and is bright blue with a bright orange-red beak and head stripe. We also came across a banana tree which, although not too common in most of New Zealand , can manage to grow in Auckland's warmer climate.


While in Auckland, we also saw the Sky Tower which is the largest man-made structure in the Southern Hemisphere. There’s a revolving restaurant near the top, and you can pay some large amount of money (though I don’t know why anyone would) to jump off the top of it and plummet down along some guy wires. We watched a number of daredevils doing it while we were sitting across the street at a Mexican restaurant sipping margaritas. If you look very closely, under the third row of windows under the bottom ring, you can see one of them on his way down.


Auckland’s harbor is filled with boats.
We read that there is one boat for every 4 Aucklanders, many of which are luxurious yachts. One evening while exploring along the Viaduct Basin, we met a man named Max who had set up a trust along with others whose aim it was to locate and return "lost" New Zealand boats, and then restore them. He was standing proudly by one his boats built in 1895 that had recently been completed, one that had been taken by Americans during World War II to Tahiti and abandoned. It was later sold to Italy which is where Max found it and brought it back to its home port.


While up in Auckland, we spent a wonderful day with a man named Julian whom we met by way of Carolyn, one of our Ohio friends. He gave us a fabulous, and too quick, tour of the area. We visited the North Shore which is the home of Mt. Victoria, another volcano with a beautiful view overlooking the city and the harbor. He took us to Muruwai Beach with its long black strand of sand stretching into the horizon. We saw a gannet colony where hundreds (thousands?) of these graceful birds were lying in the sun or soaring on the updrafts from the sea. We drove up One Tree Hill, yet another volcano-with-a-view with the remains of a Maori pa, a fortified settlement, on the top.
Although we are glad to be back in Wellington and glad that we are doing are work here instead of in Auckland, we enjoyed our time there and will fondly remember out two weeks in the "City of Sails".