
Date: Sunday 24 August 2014
Location: Auckland city, Auckland
Trip leader: Adam Meyer
Trampers: Joe Delistraty, Bimo Aryo
It’s time to talk about the coast to coast walk! 10 miles of walking through the super rugged terrain that is the city of Auckland. We walked from the University all the way down to the southern coast, thereby crossing the entire width of New Zealand. Turns out that the Maori used to use this route to transport their canoes (aka Wakas) to get around faster. But honestly I cannot imagine traveling 10 miles with a giant canoe on my back. As it was, walking with just myself and a bottle of water was hard enough. Though it was totally and completely worth it. So here’s a basic itinerary of how things went.
Originally I had planned to have about 8 people join me on this walk, but needless to say, right as the trip was about to start 3 people dropped out. It wasn’t too bad, but at least they were nice and told me not to expect them. So I headed up to the meeting spot early and sat down at a bench at 9:30, expecting that people would arrive by 10. When 10 am came around no one had shown up. I started to get a little mad, and at 10:10 I was getting ready to just call it and go back to my dorm. Granted it was an amazing day and for the life of me I could not understand why people didn’t want to go for a walk. But lo and behold at 10:15 my first tramper showed up! He was a graduate student named Bimo from Indonesia. We chatted for a while, and decided that if no one else showed in the next 15 minutes we would just do the trip the two of us. So at 1030 no one else showed, and we embarked on our adventure together. Thankfully, we did run into Joe (a guy from my program) who just happened to be running late and wanted to join. Now with two recruits we headed out into the great unknown.

First stop was the domain. A large park right behind my dorm, I had explored much of the park before, but I had never seen the path that the walk took us through. Flanked on either side by massive twisting trees and statues, the path was the perfect combination of nature and man.
Even better, we checked the forecast and we had literally the perfect conditions. Making our way slowly through the trees, following the yellow painted signs, found the winter garden. I had seen this building many times before, but now I finally had the chance to go and see it. Honestly, based on what Ashley had told me, I was kind of expecting something like the New York Botanical Gardens and was rather disappointed in that regard. The big plus though was I saw tons of plants that I honestly could not have thought up in my wildest dreams.
They had this one plant (featured about middle of the picture on the left) that honestly looked like tiny bell peppers, but were apparently flowers. The one very funny part though was the fact they that considered daffodils exotic. Both Joe and I laughed because we could literally go into our backyards and just pick them freely. Slowly we made our way out of the garden, and after a brief spell of getting lost, we managed to find the yellow arrows and continued on our way. Next up after the domain was Mount Eden. Another place that I had been meaning to cross off my check list, Mount Eden is an extinct volcano with a massive crater at the top, and it also offers some of the best views of Auckland. It honestly was a rather easy hike to just power up the mountain, but it was so worth it once we got up there. Honestly could not have had a more picturesque view of downtown. We hung out for a while on top, just to soak in the view and after snapping a few photos, we headed back down the mountain.
Now here’s where things get a bit tricky. Turns out that when we were heading down the mountain we made a wrong turn somewhere. Well we somehow wound up going the wrong way on the trail, which meant that I had no idea where to go. The yellow arrows were pointing back up the mountain and we weren’t exactly in the mood to reclimb the mountain. Instead we decided to stop for lunch at this point. We found this little village area and after a bit of exploring settled on a Japanese restaurant… That was closed. Frustrated, we opted with our second choice, another Japanese restaurant across the street…. but it too was closed. Getting a bit anger we went a few doors down and tried the thai place…. but again, it was closed. Swearing, we ran back across the street, dodging cars and opted to go to a place called Circus Circus. Weird name but amazing food. I had brunch (of course) and my waffles with caramelized bananas was delicious. Was it worth getting rejected by 3 other places? No. But it did hit the spot.
After a quick chat with one of the guys by the cash register, we figured out where to go and headed off to our next destination, One Tree Hill.
So I know what you’re thinking, no this has absolutely nothing to do with the TV show. This hill was a sacred hill to the Maori, until the British kinda turned it into No Tree Hill, but cutting down the sacred tree and in it’s place put a massive monument that was supposed to honor the Maori. They didn’t exactly like it too much. But it was on the trail so we had to go there. We headed through a series of small parks, across a rugby pitch, and around one very hyper kid.
Finally we arrived at the mountain and looking up we could see the obelisk in all of its phallic, shining glory.
I can honestly see why the Maori don’t like the monument. It’s not exactly very nice and it turns out was erected to honor the Maori after they went extinct. Guess the British underestimated them. Anyways it also turns out that the mountain is used as a pasture where there were tons of sheep and cows. So you have to walk through the pasture in order to get up to the top. Carefully stepping around the sheep poop, we came across this ancient burned out tree. Curious we noticed that there was a small entrance and went inside.
I mostly share this story because I got a cool artsy photo out of it and less because the tree held any special significance. Anyways, we climbed up to the top and once again were treated to some amazing views, lovely messages by locals, and the opportunity to take a selfie.
The one downside was that we once again managed to lose the yellow arrows and had to try and find our own way down. This wasn’t too bad, and we even ran into another girl from our program. Turns out she had run 8km to the mountain as part of her training for the half marathons she’s doing soon. Didn’t exactly expect to see her there but it was a pleasant surprise. Not wanting to keep her from running, we made our way down the mountain, and after a bit of exploring managed to once again find the yellows.
In our final leg of the walk, we took things slow, and paused to enjoy the view a lot more.
Eventually, after avoiding the world’s worst roundabout, we managed to make it to the south shore. Honestly, not my favorite place.
There were massive power lines running through the park and it turns out that the lake in front of me is just overflow for when the ocean tide comes in so that it doesn’t flood the highway. Nevertheless, we had done it. I submit to you the picture that proves we made it to the very end, Bimo included.
Author: Adam Meyer
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