I think the kayaking trip must’ve been the most energetic thing I have done so far this trip, as not only did it make me crash out last night, but I slept in and didn’t wake up until after 9.30am! That is incredibly late for me! And to top it off, I still felt tired – not achy as I had expected, just wiped out!
Therefore we decided to have a relatively calm day! After scraping together some breakfast in the form of sachet coffee(mmmmm delicious!), I slowly got myself together and it wasn’t until late morning that I was a bit more lively and we got in the car, ready for our drive about Auckland.
We followed our noses more than the map and just had a general mooch around some suburban parts of Auckland which are outside the main city. It was funny seeing how a little one horse town would have a really random scattering of shops– obviously there would be the little convenience store and maybe a liquor store, but often a really peculiar place next door, such as a fancy dress costume hire place; I can’t see people popping out for a pint of milk and a witch’s outfit?!
One of the places we went to was Henderson – where Mike’s family used to live, so we drove about the centre and he recognised lots of places he went to as a kiddie. Actually, it was one of the bigger towns – it even had a Maccas and a Countdown (these are my markers of what constitutes a large-ish town).
Next we headed up into the Waitakere Ranges – big foresty hills that make up the backdrop of the city. The road through the hills was called the “Scenic Drive” and took us through the forests, along narrow, and winding roads and up and down the hills which made my ears pop! The hills were surprisingly high. The Scenic Drive itself was slightly dubiously named – I guess it’s quite subjective as it depends on what the person naming the road deemed to be ‘scenic’ himself (assuming it was a man of course, it could well have been a woman or a group of men and women; who’s to say?!); so if scenic to this person was hills and trees, then indeed it was scenic. My own interpretation of ‘scenic’ would involve views to look out at, and the road did sort of fit this profile; If it wasn’t for the excessively thick tree canopy, it would have constituted as significantly scenic – every so often there would be a second where the trees thinned out and we’d get a flash of a panorama over Auckland, but then it would be gone! We did find a couple of bits which you could stop at and look out and it was an impressive view.
Along the drive, there were a few walks you could stop off to do, so we plumped for one of those – Fairy Falls, as it sounded pretty! The walk itself took us through the forest and down to the waterfalls. This particular forest is the home of a protected tree – the Kauri tree – so there were lots of signs up warning about pests and ways in which the Kauri is being killed off. So serious are they taking the preservation of the Kauri that they had even put some spray to put on your shoes to kill off potential bacteria, but unfortunately it had run out, so instead we gave our shoes a good scraping on the brushes to try and shift whatever it was that we might contaminate the forest with!
The walk down to the falls was quite steep and that meant it would be an even steeper climb back up to the car! We passed some Kauri trees along the way and I realised why there was such a big fuss about preserving them – they are absolutely massive! There is a Mauri story that explains the beginning of the Earth and the Kauri tree is said to be the son of the original mother and father (who are now the ground and the sky). The falls were indeed pretty – several little falls making up one big one. Apart from that, there was not anything particularly striking about them!
After the slightly strenuous walk back up the steep steps and slopes, we got back to the car and made our way back to the hostel where Mike got ready to go and see some of his family. I chilled out and got chatting to a girl called Kim. We ended up spending the evening watching tv and once again, Lord of the Rings (I don’t have a clue which one) was on the Movie channel so we watched that before I headed off to bed.
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