A trip to the Post Office, a book & a scenic drive !

Today was a fairly relaxed affair and I didn't rush to get up this morning. My main tasks today were to post some letters, one to the NZ Tax man and the other to a property agent in the UK. These two letters facilitated a trip to the Post Office, or PostShop as it's known here. Fortunately, the nearest postshop is just 2 minutes away in Botany Town Centre. The shops were crowded and it had to be said the selection of shops in Botany is amazing ! As an example, we've got 3 supermarkets within 200 yards of each other, Pak n Save, Countdown and New World and KMart over the road !

Anyway, the PostShop is located in a book shop (don't ask me because I don't know either) so once I'd sent the letters off I turned my attention to the host of books being offered for sale. I came across a book called "Auckland with a view" which is basically 50 scenic walks and days out around the Auckland area. This looked rather promising as it listed a lot of places to go and see and gave directions as to how to get there and where to park.



As I've got my SatNav with me, getting to anywhere is easy if I know the road name, but it doesn't tell me where I can and can't park so this bit of information in the book was marvelous. I made the purchase and after a good hours walk around the shopping centre and following the largest cup of coffee this side of Rio, I headed off, book in hand and SatNav switched on to find some of the views in the book. I first headed off to St Heliers as this is only down the road from me in Botany and its probably my favourite Auckland suburb so far.

The objective was to find Achilles Point and this was accomplished with consummate ease. The books author, Sue Hall certainly knows a good view when she sees one. St Heliers is a very pretty little village with stunning views over the harbour and faces the Volcano of Rangitoto directly. The picture at the top of the post is Rangitoto.



Achilles point has a viewing deck right out over the cliffs giving views right along the Tamaki Strait back towards, and beyond, the city and in the opposite direction towards Great Barrier Island and up to the Coromandel Peninsula way off into the distance.

After taking a handful of photo's, including the one above looking back towards Mission Bay, I went in search of my second target, Glovers Park.

Glovers Park is only about a Kilometre from Achilles Point and is actually the cone of another extinct volcano, giving it an amphitheater appearance. This is an awesome park, and was practically deserted apart from a Father and Son playing football (or soccer as they call it in these parts) until there was some sort of fallout and the child ran off crying and the dad stormed off in pursuit ! Hysterical !!!

The view from the top of Glovers Park was fantastic. The two pictures below are at the bottom and top of Glovers Park. This peak gave a loftier view than Achilles Point and also gave a much closer view of the extinct Volcano that is Brown's Island as well as Rangitoto which dominates the harbour skyline wherever you are in Auckland. I was the only person up there and the shelter of the bay meant that the wind was much less than it had been at Achilles Point, I sat and watched the World go by for a good 30 minutes, the sun was hot, probably more so now that I was out of the wind and there were barely any clouds in the sky. It was at this point that my camera battery died and I had to accept that despite the magnitude of the scenery, the photography would have to wait until another day.



Eventually, I tore myself away and quickly checked my book to see if there were any more views on my way back. There was ! I headed back towards Mission Bay and stopped off at Bastion Point and the Michael Joseph Savage Memorial. Mr Savage was NZ's First Labour Prime Minister and apparently was held dear to the hearts of the Kiwi's. I don't really care for that kind of history but the manicured gardens were really nice. the place was very busy with people just enjoying a relaxing late afternoon stroll, the weather was warm, Auckland was glistening in the low sun and all was well in the World. After a brief stroll about the park and a long admiring glance at the view, and it has to be said, some couple having sex behind a wall, I got back into the car and headed, once again, down Tamaki Drive towards the City. En route I saw the sign for Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Encounter and Undersea World so, naturally, I pulled over and went inside.



Now Kelly it turns out was inspired to be an Undersea film maker after watching Jacques Cousteau films as a child. He taught himself to dive, borrowed friends equipment and eventually made films of his own. He had this vision of turning a disused sewage tank on the outskirts of Auckland into an Undersea world with a moving walkway in a glass tunnel, the type you see at any public aquaria these days. He added to his plans an antarctic museum detailing the antarctic expeditions of Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen and also set up a colony of penguins as part of the experience. Unfortunately, according to the little film that was showing on loop inside the complex, Kelly died of heart failure only 2 months after his undersea World opened to the public so he barely got to see the fruits of his labours. Shame! Still, his memory lives on, the museum, penguins and undersea exhibit were enjoyable and are certainly worth a diverting couple of hours if you find yourself in Auckland. I left the building just moments before closing time and staggered, bleary eyed, from semi darkness into a low setting sun. The view of the sun setting behind Auckland CBD and the haze from the water would have made for a world class photo but despite my best efforts to coax one final picture out of the dead battery, the scene went unrecorded forever. Hopefully, next time I'll have both a working camera and the same atmospherics to reproduce the picture for a later post.

Anyway, that was a long winded way of saying that I don't have much to tell you today and that I just wanted to post the pictures.

John