Auckland and Waiheke Island

This is Auckland!

So!

Where did we end last time...right, checking in to the Kiwi International Hotel.

It's a pretty decent place! My room was a bit on the cozy side, as was the bathroom (the door had a piece cut away so that it could fully open without hitting the sink), but it served its purpose. The first thing that hit me was that it was rather hot.

This was probably because I was wearing a coat and long pants in what I think was low 80 degree weather, and I had just carried (well, rolled) my 50lb duffel bag and carried my two what must have been 20lb each carry-ons (it's a good thing airlines don't check the weight of carry-ons, or I would have had three checked bags most likely) uphill for about two blocks.

So, after correcting that problem and having a shower, I decided to wander around Auckland, since planning ahead is less fun.

The heart of Auckland, with my hotel marked in a lovely shade of purple

I spent most of the afternoon walking up and down Queen street and looking in the stores and such along it, which was a nice change from sitting in a plane for hours. It totalled to about 8 or 9km (about 5 miles, two round trips from the hotel to the waterfront and back), with half of that being uphill and half being downhill (to the waterfront was downhill, from the waterfront was, shockingly enough, uphill), so it was a decent amount of walking. It felt good to stretch the legs a bit.

What time wasn't spent walking around Queen street was spent making what turned out to be a big mistake, that being planning my trip from Auckland to Napier. I decided that it would be neat to take a few days to get to the school, stopping in a few places en route. In the hotel, they had a travel desk with a lovely and helpful lady who helped me plan the trip...unfortunately, I didn't catch on that she was a travel agent until it was too late, and then I didn't want to just walk away for fear of hurting her feelings after she had helped me.

I'm bad at saying no to salespeople, essentially.

Lesson learned.

So I had booked a bus trip from Auckland to Rotorua, a hotel for two nights there, then a bus trip to Taupo, a hotel for one night there, then a bus to Napier. Yay! Everything was looking good.

The next day was a day to just bum around Auckland, so instead of just walking up and down Queen Street, I decided to take a ferry to one of the nearby islands, and Waiheke Island was the one I chose to go to for no particular reason other than the lovely gal at the front desk of the Kiwi International mentioned it.

The ferry ride to Waiheke was about 35ish minutes long, and it was beautiful - the Hauraki Gulf has quite a few little islands.

Waiheke from the ferry!

I decided to go on one of the hiking trails around the island - I had no idea how big the island was at the time of this decision (12 miles long, 35 square miles) - and I stumbled upon one of their...I don't really know how to describe it. It's called "Sculpture on the Gulf", and they basically have outdoor sculptures hanging out along a walking path on part of Waiheke Island.

One of the sculptures on the gulf!

So I walked along that, and when it came time to either go to Onerua (the closest little town/village to the ferry) or continue onwards, I decided to continue onwards because I didn't know what else to do. Plus walking is free, whereas hanging out in a village would probably not be because of stores and the like.

Some of the scenery along the walking path!

So after walking around for a while, I got lost.

The path I was on just kind of hit a road and ended, with no pointers as to where to go next, so I walked up the road a bit, thinking that was the direction of town. I had gotten completely turned around by the walking path, apparently, because I was walking in exactly the wrong direction. I only discovered this when I saw a sign for a path to a bay that I had no idea existed and was far away from where I wanted to be. So, it was time to backtrack.

After backtracking along the road for a bit, I stumbled across the continuation of the path I was originally on, whose sign could only really be seen if you were walking towards the path I had come out from when I first got lost, because the sign was below and on the opposite side of the road my original walking path hit. It was one of those situations where it's good that I was just looking around cluelessly!

After continuing on the newly discovered path for a little while, it started to get a bit drizzly, which I should've been prepared for but wasn't. This was probably the most surreal part of my Waiheke trip, with loud insects buzzing all around me in the middle of a forest on a sparsely populated island with me following a path that seemed to go nowhere and having not seen or heard a person (other than some people in cars when I was wandering around on the road) for about an hour.

It was now that I was very glad to be in New Zealand and not anywhere else, because every time my tired, sweaty, slightly dehydrated mind worried about being attacked by something, I remembered that there was nothing in New Zealand to be attacked by. There are no bears, no mountain lions, no snakes, no komodo dragons, no ticks, and no mosquitoes. So I trudged on.

I wound up in a field with a horse.

I had to climb fences that were apparently ok to climb over seeing that the trail markers clearly pointed out where to climb over the fences, with little wooden stepping stools being provided, and this brought me to the horse.

I had no idea where I was at this point, but I could see houses in the distance.

I walked around the horse, up and down the field a bit, trying to find the next yellow marker to find out where on earth I was, but all I saw were more little pastures.

I climbed a fence at a sanctioned climbing point, and found myself in another field with another horse, who just lazily turned and looked up at me. I decided to opt for the field without the horse, just to give the horses their space. Not that I'm a horseophobe or anything, but at this point I didn't really want to be chased around by an angry horse in its own field.

This was when I noticed a sign for a winery/restaurant.

Why was there a sign for a winery/restaurant in the middle of a meeting point between two or three fields, most of which were occupied by lone horses?

I decided to ignore that question and follow the sign, and, lo and behold, I found the winery. Mudbrick Vineyard, to be exact. I walked in and promptly asked the host where I was, and he pointed it out on a map very kindly. The restaurant looked very nice, but it was a bit pricey and they were having a private party, so I decided to look for something cheaper and less private party-ful. From there on, I walked happily to Onerua, had a bit to eat, got more water (which I had run out of on the final leg to Onerua), and walked back to the ferry to Auckland.

My route around Waiheke Island's eastern chunk (it really doesn't look that impressive on a map...I think I was walking for 3 or so hours, maybe 4? Part of the whole experience was just the incredible feeling of isolation/being lost, not really in a bad way until I was runninglow on water, and also the slightly muggy heat)

Aaaand this is where this post ends, because the library is almost closed for the day. Thanks, weekends!

NEXT TIME, ON THE THRILLING ADVENTURES OF MARK AND...HIS LUGGAGE?:

The Auckland Sky Tower at Night, and Why Rotorua is Gross