Category: Auckland

After starting to think about this trip five months ago, D-Day has finally arrived and my plan is no further ahead than it was then, in fact the options have gotten far more complicated as time has gone and i really have no idea what the future holds  beyond my flight to Kuching (Sarawak, Borneo) in 3 days time !

I was planning on a final New Zealand post from the airport before I left, however with no free wi-fi at Auckland airport I had a glass of wine and browsed Facebook on my phone instead. So I am writing this as we bump our way over Indonesia at 40,000 feet.  Jetstar business class is comfortable, the food and drink is OK but the movie selection is dire. I have watched Contagion and Cowboys and Aliens, both were average movies and filled four hours of the ten hour flight, leaving two more hours to go now.

I have had a good last week in Auckland, stayed with a number of people and have really appreciated those nights. Last night I stayed at mums, which was very nice and she took me to the airport this morning where my sister met us for coffee and final farewells. I am not good at the whole farewell thing so just having mum and Sarah was perfect. I said good bye to Aiden yesterday and to Meliesha on Christmas day when I took her to the airport for her return to England, so there was no tearfull leaving 2 of my babies behind.

Thanks to all of you who let me do the goodbyes my way, it made it all so much easier. Thanks also to those who have fed and watered me and let me stay in your house over my three homeless weeks, you all mean a lot to me.

So, it is farewell to New Zealand, to Aiden and mum, the Hunters and  to all my buddies – I will miss you and wish you well until I see you again, whether it is back home or in some foreign location.

I also meant to get mum to take a photo of me at the airport, all loaded up with my backpack, but totally forgot so no photo this post.

At least I have free wi-fi in my hotel ! Singapore post tomorrow !

On  the morning of Christmas Eve I went for my last trail run in the Waitakeres for who knows how long. Vicki’s favourite trail is Omanawainui , which I am going to say is not one of mine. Last time I ran Omana, we ran up it in a howling wind and horizontal rain, as the trail is largely exposed it was not a huge bundle of laughs ! However, Christmas Eve was virtually cloudless and still, so I suggested we run down Omana and back up Kura, giving us a run under two hours, which was all I was capable of after an average ride yesterday.

With a wee bit of trepidation we took off , jogged up the start of Omana. After the mudfest  that was Home track last week I was a bit concerned about the conditions on the trail, Omana is steep in parts and I really wanted to avoid twisting an ankle with only three days to go before I leave ! Concerns were completely unwarranted, it was like we were running in a different season to last week, the track was very dry and verging on dusty in parts.  My one complaint !! the amount of gorse and cutty grass was appalling, almost made the track unusable in parts.

Omana has some stunning views over the Manukau harbour and Whatipu Beach. I have never seen  (I say this regularly)  the harbour so still, stunning !

Looking back up the harbour towards Cornwallis

I am looking vaguely atheletic 🙂Looking over Whatipu BeachWhatipu ! I have never seen it so still, it looked like you could have snorkelled there !

After Omana we ran up Kura track back to the car. While Omana is either steeply up or steeply down, Kura completely lulls you into a false sense of security by being flat for the first couple of KM’s, running through some nice second generation native forest with  four little stream crossings. It then ends with a brutal climb to the Puriri Ridge track and a wee flat jog back to the start.

It was a great last run (stagger up the hills), great weather, stunning views and good company !

Come on Auckland Council, this gorse and cutty grass is ridiculous !

I have been riding mountain bikes for thirteen years now and for most of that time I have ridden at Woodhill forest, just north of Auckland. When we first started riding there the tracks were managed by the Auckland MTB Club and there was a limited number of trails. Many  years ago the park changed to a commercial enterprise and has expanded immensely with many many kilometres of managed single track riding.

As the park is now commercial you have to pay a fee to ride,  this was/is still a source of contention amongst the longer term mountain bikers, but hey the tracks are good and they do sell coffee at the park !

A few years back I spent a couple of weeks building tracks (and got to ride for free for a few years) I worked with a group on a number of tracks but built the “No Brakes” track myself over a couple of work holidays. I have a soft spot for Woodhill !

Miles and I went up there on Friday afternoon, the hottest day of the summer so far, for a last ride for a while. For some reason I was dead flat and had limited power, so we didn’t have the longest or fastest ride, however it was, as always, a good ride, and we did ride out the back and do No Brakes…

Miles heard a rumour that the Spaghetti trail block of forest is going to cut down soon 😦 Spag must have opened in 2000 and was one of my favourite trails, I have ridden it hundreds of times as it is a good link out to the back trails. I hope it doesnt get the chop, but if it does at least I rode it before I left.

Hopefully I will get some riding in in SE Asia, but will definitely do some in Europe and if I settle there for a while I will buy myself a new bike, one with gears and lots of suspension !

I was at my sister’s house this evening and she was fretting that my nephew, who is away for a few days camping with friends at Tawharanui, hadn’t texted her all day – even though the arrangement was he wouldn’t text everyday ! This got us talking about how mobile phones had changed the expectation of parents on the volume of communication required by their children. I commented on how we used to bugger off for the entire day when we were young and no one worried at all, well maybe they did and we just didn’t know it ! I must ask my mother.

As I started writing this post I was reminded of that conversation and how when I was in my early teens we used to spend a few days up at Mangawhai each summer and my friends and I would go spearfishing in the estuary. We would be gone for hours with snorkelling gear and spear guns and come home late in the day with the occasional fish for dinner. No one ever came to look for us, even when a large school of sharks swam up the estuary and the beaches were all closed… We spent many happy summers snorkelling at many beaches around Auckland and further afield.

When I left school many years ago, through a lack of any direction, I followed my dad and did an aircraft engineering apprenticeship with Air New Zealand. I stuck out the five years of the apprenticeship, but left soon after as engineering really was not my thing. Soon after I started the apprenticeship I realised what I really wanted to be was a marine biologist, but I never did anything about it at the time, or ever since and have only done one dive in the last twenty years.

Hmm, rather long pre-amble, sorry ! back to reality !

An acquaintance of mine, Alex (I am sure he will appear later in this blog as I am staying with him in Kuching), told me about the awesome diving to be had all over SE Asia so I decided it was time to live that thirty year old dream and do a dive course before I left. I signed up for a four day course with the local PADI shop, Dive HQ in New Lynn and completed the course last week.

The first two days were spent watching videos and answering questions in the mornings with the afternoons spent practising the skills in the pool in the afternoon.  It was certainly interesting and at times challenging, learning to do some of the skills around things that can go wrong takes a certain amount of trust that you are not going to suck in mouthfuls of water with each long breath. The last two days were open water dives and sadly we were not graced with good weather!

Wednesday we went to Jones Bay on the Tawharanui Peninsular, ideally we would have dived at the Goat Island marine reserve, but the wind and swell direction put paid to that. Jones bay was still rough, but once under the surface the visibility improved slightly and the swell dropped.  We completed two dives and demonstrated a number of skills to the instructor.

Jones Bay

Gearing up

There was no improvement in the wind on Thursday and the showers were far more frequent so a decision was made for us to dive in Lake Pupuke on the north shore. This was greeted with some nervousness as someone drowned there earlier in the year on a dive course, though not with out school. I was glad we did it, I can say I have dived there and will never need to repeat ! it was an interesting dive, though with a lot of surface chop the water was quite murky.  We did two short dives and demonstrated the remaining skills and then got out fairly quickly !

Lake Pupuke

Ready to go, warmer in the wetsuit, yay for summer 🙂

I enjoyed the course, glad I did it in NZ before I left, diving in cold, murky and choppy waters means I will be completely relaxed in clear, warm and still waters in SE Asia – just make sure there are no sharks !