Thursday marked the first day of classes at the UofA. In our New Zealand society class, we started talking about the idea of New Zealand’s identity, what shapes it as a country and what it is about his place that makes it so unique. New Zealanders relish in the islands remoteness, their lax attitudes and their ability to not take things too seriously. We learned a bit about the geography or the island, it’s history and basically that there is serious gigantism, the land is split by a huge geothermic chasm and that there were eagles with 15 meter wing spans. Basically, this is the weirdest place in the world.
Today we had our first program “field trip”. It was a bus tour of Auckland and all of its surrounding glory. To be honest, I was mostly excited about the promise of a stop at the beach during the trip. In true Julia fashion, I was awake and ready to go, but waited at the wrong entrance to the Uniloge for the bus to pick us up. My prepaid phone has a tendency to turn off every once and a while for long periods of time, and its saw it fit to turn off during this hour. After waiting about 30 min for my group to show up, I realized that something was off, I quickly ran upstairs to my room to check and see if my times and location were right and of course, I was 30 min late, and on the wrong side of the building. After 20 minutes of FREAKING OUT my phone finally turned on and beraided me with text after text from friends on the program saying “GET OUTSIDE WE’RE LEAVING”. I call one of my friends and the program leader advised me to get a taxi to Mount Eden, which is about 4 miles away from where I was.
Seeing as how I had NO New Zealand currency and taxis never pass by our complex I started a mad dash down Anzac Street. I ran wildly in my flip-flops, alone and sweating, clutching my camera damning my inability to check emails and genuinely be on time for ANYTHING. I was a mess. After a solid 10 minutes of running, I found a currency exchange threw my 40 us dollars at her, received 45 NZ dollars (TOTALLY RIPPED OFF) and jaywalked the streets until I found a taxi. I climb in the front seat, something that I’ve NEVER done with a taxi, or that’s not encouraged in America at least, and we were off. Marlon, My driver asked me a barrage of questions about where I was from and how long I was here, and why I was so sweaty but he kept me entertained, rooted for me the whole way there and made some of the best cabbie small talk I’d ever had. At one point he advised me to pretend as if I was driving to get some experience for driving on the left side of the road. He dropped me off at the summit of Mount Eden, made sure I met up with my group and wished me well. Thank you for that Marlon. My group was happy to see me, and I was too. Mount Eden was absolutely beautiful. It is an old inactive volcano turned park with gorgeous views of the city and surrounding land. After talking a bit with Joe from GOOT, we all got on our bus to go to our second destination.
The roads to the Cascade Kauri Park were so narrow and overgrown, I felt as though we could have died at any point, but our driver knew his shit. We parked and walked around the reservation. This park was AMAZING. The trees, the plants, everything was HUGE. I wasn’t in Jurassic park, I WAS JARASSIC PARK. We hiked for a while and I wondered allowed about why it was advised that we wear flip-flops to this whole excursion. I kept falling behind the group, taking pictures and just marveling in how beautiful this place really is.

From there we went to Lake Wainamu . There were quite a few colorful people, and cars peppered around the entrance so I was expecting a busy place. Joe took us down a trail of hot black volcanic sand for a few minutes, made us all hop a fence, and lead us up to what looked like it was the beach of the lake. After emerging from the trail I realized how wrong I was. There before us like a huge lake bed, filled with not water, but MOLTON HOT BLACK VOLCANIC SAND. I look down at my feet and wonder WHY I had worn flip-flops this day and WHY Joe wasn’t in as much pain as us poor sorry soles (PUN ALERT). In any event he pushed us forward, ONWARD INTO THE SAND PIT. With each step my feet sunk into the excruciatingly hot sand, which was almost manageable until it would make is way underneath my feet, leaving the burning hot sand between my whiny baby uncalloused feet and my cheap four dollar Old Navy Flip-flops. What I would have done for a pair of socks, or ice cubes. We made our way up a large dune and I prayed to see water over the ridge. Once again I was let down, there was at least another mile of hot sand between myself and anything that resembled lush green salvation. So we walked on, wind blowing, sand and hair flying, feet burning and mouths dry for what seemed like an eternity. I stared at my feet as the carefully walked over the sand but quickly became mesmerized by the sparkly bits and entered some sort of state of delirium singing the Disney version of “Arabian nights” to keep morale with my fellow ladies in pain.
After about a mile and a half of walking in the sand we finally reached the lake. It was situated down a 12 foot drop of sand but that didn’t seem to stop any of the locals from swimming. Next to where we put our things, a group of 7 or so kiwi boys had set up a sort of plastic bag slide going down the embankment. They lathered it with soap and spent their whole day, running jumping, drinking and catcalling. What a life. Basically, after walking all that was in the sand, I wasn’t going to let a silly little 12 foot embankment keep my poor dogs from reaching sweet sweet relief, so I kicked of my shoes and clothes and ran down into the lake. We all swam for a while, the kids in the program made me do synchronized swimming tricks and we gathered our things and left. We continued to walk on the Satan sand, up along the embankment and looked down at the small stream that lay below it. Joe, deciding that he no longer wanted to be in the sand began RUNNING DOWN THE EMBANKMENT. The dune’s height had grown significantly since the lake and now was about 200 ft long at about a 70 to 75 degree angle. One by one we all follow him. I clutch my bag and run for dear life with my feet sinking ankle deep into the sand. From the bottom, we carried on through the stream and back to the bus.
From there we headed to Bethells Beach, we had little time to enjoy it but the scenery was breath taking. At each end of the shore, there were huge volcanic rock formations that gated in the black sand beach. The surf was rough and the rip current strong and made Misquamicut in Rhode Island during a thunderstorm look like nothing. We took pictures, swam and investigated caves before heading to our last destination of the day, Coopers Creek Winery.
We had a wine tasting at the corner creek vineyard. Our group walked in, were all given small little whine glasses and were essentially SCHOOLED by a small Italian woman about all the different types of wine that New Zealand had to offer. Prior to the wine tasting, a handful of girls and I took our shorts off over our swimsuits to have our first wine tasting, but pantsless. Now I know that I will go to more wine tastings in my life, but how many times will I have the opportunity to have it socially acceptable to be pants-less while doing it? Not many. Point: When in Rome, do as the village idiot, it makes for better stories. After getting thoroughly tipsy we jumped on the bus to get back home.
Up until this day I was having a hard time trying to get motivated enough to begin to plan traveling out of the city to see the county. From Auckland, the rugged terrain of the surrounding mountains looks softened by the city’s clouds. They begin to look so far away, a hassle, something that can wait. But after today, I realize it can’t wait. If I am to see this beautiful country I need to be exploring on ever ounce of free time that I have. This trip really lit a fire under my butt about getting out there and pushing myself to do the things I never thought I would have the energy, will or stamina to do. I am officially enthralled to see this place, its people, and its culture and to gain a little bit of a window into what it is about this place that is so intoxicating.