The soil is just like in Hawaii, brown and volcanic and sticky. The grass grows just on the top of the soil and is crunchy like the grass in Hawaii.
The flora is tropical and I don't recognize all the trees but they feel like Hawaii too.
It is about like July in Maine here, according to the calendar and the latitude. So it is hot but not too hot, and everyone is behaving like it is summer.
Every person we have encountered has a lovely New Zealand accent and is very helpful and friendly.
This is a multi-cultural city with people from this side of the world -- mostly Pacific Island and Chinese/Japanese/Korean plus Maori and European.
Lots and lots of interesting food from all around this side of the Pacific.
There is one particular flower in bloom that we haven't yet had a chance to photograph, but it is blue and perennial and looks sort of like cleome but not with pokies. I will find out the name.
Our host had Marmite out for breakfast, in addition to muesli.
The streets and towns have British and Maori names, all mixed together depending on who got to name it first. The non-British words look Hawaiian.
The only thing that really stresses me is sitting in the passenger seat on the left side of the car and feeling like the driver is over-compensating and driving on the extreme left, endangering the passenger and the left mirror. But of course nothing bad happened, it's just a scary place to be, on the left with no steering wheel.
Auckland reminds us of Seattle, in terms of architecture and plants and water everywhere and possibly the general age of the city.
I have been alert to see if I hear American accents and I am pretty sure I haven't heard one.
Very neat and tidy house -- our room on the left. No problems. |
The moa, a little scary. |
Oh, there was a whole section about volcanoes. Very detailed, very gruesome in some ways. Lots of science about how they work and why. They are really the reason we still have enough carbon dioxide to keep alive, so they are doing us all a lot of good. There was a whole display on the ten ways you could die from a volcano. And there were some amazing stories of survival. In 1982 there was a British Airways passenger jet that flew over a volcano (Mount Galungung) that had erupted, but the crew did not know that had happened, and all four of the engines died. The pilots had no idea what was going on, but they put out a reassuring message to their passengers and then they tried to figure out what to do. As the plane fell to lower altitudes, eventually one and then all of the engines started again before they crashed. They landed, with some more complications, and no one died. The windows of the airplane were scraped so badly by volcanic ash that it was impossible to see out, and the instrument landing system was inoperable. One of the pilots sat on an armrest and peered out of a tiny place in the window that was not scratched. There was also this room that was set up like a living room and you sit on the couches and look out the front window at a view of the bay. There is a newscast on the TV talking about the possibility of an imminent eruption, and then the volcano in the window erupts and the TV shuts off and then there is this terrible view of a huge black wave coming toward the window and then the room shakes like an earthquake. Whew. These people have a different reality to endure. Basically if they don't get enough warning and evacuate the region, everyone dies.
After that we went through the wharf area of downtown -- lots of construction and traffic -- and didn't stop there. It was touristy but also full of real businesses and work. A huge crew ship was right there, and somewhere there was the yacht that won the America's Cup but we didn't identify it as we inched through the streets, focusing on all those left turns and roundabouts.
Maybe the America's Cup yacht, being towed so fast it is up on its foils. |
The North Head was a familiar place, as we have visited many such spots with bunkers and places for big guns, as they watch out for enemies during war. Diamond Head is the most like it, but there are many others: Gibraltar, Dover, even north of Bethany in NJ. We climbed to the top of the hill and looked at the view from all sides. There was a beach below that was super shallow -- people walked out in ankle deep water for a very long way. On the hill, there were kids sliding down the steep grassy slope on cardboard, having no snow or any possibility of snow ever. (More like Seattle than Maine.)
Guns to the left with Auckland across the bay. |
All that bay, inside the trees, is no deeper than your knees. |
Eight different stalls with all drinks sold at a single counter. |
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