Auckland, New Zealand

After all that, having said I probably would not write about Auckland, which is on the east coast of the north island of New Zealand, I have decided I simply must write a post about this lovely city.

I had breakfast on Tuesday morning with some of my dinner companions to farewell our New Zealand friends, who live in Auckland. As we watched out of the window of the smorgasbord dining room on Deck 14, they proudly gave us a wonderful commentary about their home city and its picturesque coastline, islands and bays, pointing out all the highlights.

While Wellington is the capital of New Zealand, Auckland has the largest population and occupies the largest urban area in New Zealand. However, because of the terrain, Auckland has not been able to spread far inland and instead has spread along the coastline - for a very long distance. Since it is built on top of now dormant cone volcanoes, there are several hills within the city that stand above the landscape, and not far away, on one of the islands there is another quite high volcano, although this is only young and is described as a ’sleeping giant’. 

As the ship slowly made its way along the wide bay to the dock, which is right in the middle of the ‘downtown’ area at the end of the main street, we saw many cliffs along the shore which afford the residents there spectacular panoramic views. Needless to say the prime real estate there is really expensive. In fact all the real estate in Auckland is expensive, I was told. Even an ordinary suburban dwelling would cost about a million dollars to buy. 

My friends very kindly took me to one of the conical hills near the heart of the city known as Mt Wellington to see the views. It was extremely windy so we only stayed around the car park area which was just below the peak, and did not climb to the very top, but we were still able to see the crater and a great view of a new housing development below, on what had once been a quarry.

We also drove along part of the coastline where there were some of the cliffs I had seen from the ship. The multi-level mansions were built with great verandahs to make the most of the great vistas. Across the road from them were walking trails along the beaches with their enticing golden sands and blue-green water. At the highest point there was lookout and we stopped and saw the views from there. The sun was in the wrong direction for some photos, but I still took quite a few photos from there. This spot was really windy too. 

When I take you on some of my other journeys as I continue my blog, I will show you other aspects of Auckland that I saw last year. But for now I will say that one aspect of Auckland that impresses me greatly is the absence of graffiti. It is so good to drive around and see clean buildings and fences!  Why are they clean? The very wise authorities stamped on this immediately when the graffiti first started and still do. If anyone tries to despoil a place with graffiti, it is removed immediately. I believe that Finland is another country that has successfully stopped this anti-social behaviour too. If only other cities - including mine - were sensible like that! 

Our next and only other port of call was the Bay of Islands, where I had a wonderful time. I will talk about that next.

The first three photos were taken on the volcanic hill, the last one looking into the crater, and the remaining photos were taken along the beach and from the clifftop at a place just a few kilometres from the heart of the city. The Maori totem poles were next to the lookout, where there also was a memorial to sailors who had served in the New Zealand Navy in World War 2.