. . . And the Livin' Is Easy

Summer is well and truly here - a sub-tropical summer, yet. It's been getting up around 27-29c (86-90F) every day for the last week, and the humidity is increasing as each warm day goes by. Don't know if it's "normal," but most people (us included) don't have air conditioning, so we're hoping it won't last. The worst part is that the windows don't have screens, and the mozzies have figured out where we live. We got a fan yesterday, and that seemed to help - I only woke up from something buzzing in my ear once last night.

During the past several days we've had a rental car and been out exploring again. Monday was a holiday - Auckland's Anniversary Day (it's turning 165 years old. For perspective: Chicago will be 168 this year.) The City of Sails celebrated with - what else? - a regatta. Actually a bunch of regattas, with races for every category of boat imaginable. Harauki Gulf was full of them, and the strong easterly breeze ensured that everyone clipped along at a good pace.

We drove about 30 km (almost 19 miles) north of the city, where a sizeable penninsula juts out into the Gulf. Shakespear Regional Park (named for a settler family, not the writer) occupies most of the end point, and provided great views of the city skyline in the distance as well as the sail boats racing around the Gulf Islands. We took a trail that lead us through sheep and cattle pastures (which, although still a novelty for me, is completely normal here), past a few WWII pillboxes (they worried about a Japanese invasion during the war, and the Dept. of Defense still occupies a good chunk of the penninsula), and along volcanic flows and shell-strewn beaches.

Then yesterday we drove about half an hour west of the city to the Waitakere Range area. I've been hearing about this place in the news since we arrived; there's a lot of controversy about whether/how to control suburban sprawl there. Barely a ten minute drive past the edge of suburbia is Auckland Centennial Memorial Park, the largest reserve in the region. It's an oasis of native bush covered mountains - especially valuable in a country that's cut down the vast majority of its native forests.

We took a road that said "9 km" to Whaitapu, which we could see on the map was the point where Manukau Harbor meets the Tasman Sea. What the sign didn't say was that it quickly turned into a narrow gravel affair full of hairpin twists through the hills. Fortunately, we were driving a rental.

What the road led us to was a small collection of bachs (beach homes) - a few dilapidated shacks and caravans (trailers) - on the edge of an ecological wonderland. Facing the waterfront were hills are riddled with caves, some big enough to hold scores of people comfortably. And between the caves and the water were huge dunes of blue-black sand that spilled down to broad marshy wetlands. The air was buzzing with cicadas, bees, and red dragon flies, as well as the swallows and shorebirds that were snacking on them. We walked around for an hour without seeing anyone else, although there were a dozen cars where we parked.

Cheers,
Sandie