Auckland at last!
New Zealand takes soil contamination very seriously – and rightly so. Their iconic Kauri (pronounced Kody) trees are threatened from a soil fungus that was brought in years ago on the tracks of some earthmoving equipment. The inspection officer was nice about it and a quick rinse and I was on my way …
A quiet freeway?
The next morning I was up at 5am (8am West Coast time) and after a lovely breakfast and some work on the computer, set out to explore a bit of Auckland. Aside from the challenge of remembering to look right first then left when crossing the street, the first thing I really noticed was road noise, or more accurately, the lack of road noise! Highway 1 runs right through Auckland and it is amazingly quiet! I’m sure I was drawing stares as tried to process the trucks and cars passing by at a ¼ of the volume I expected. I didn’t find out how they do it, but apparently, it’s a combination of special asphalt, tires and noise restrictions on their vehicles. What would have been deafening in the states was nothing … you could easily hold a conversation without raising your voice. Seattle could learn a lot from this!
Quiet on the set!
After pondering the freeway for far too long, my next stop was supposed to be the Sky Tower – I like to visit the highest spot in a new town to get a sense of the layout and the major sites (learned this from David Jullian, a Seattle photographer and Photoshop guru). Unfortunately, the observation deck was enveloped in clouds, so that would have to be saved for another day. On to Vodaphone NZ for a local SIM card.
After getting setup with a local phone# and such, I was off again to discover the city. Determined to reach the shoreline, I headed more or less southwest … through the Parnell neighborhood and finally reaching the port. Along the way, I came across what I can only guess is a TV or low budget sci-fi filming. Wasn’t able to discover much before being chased off …My first NZ friend ...
After finally reaching the waterfront, my phone battery died. I’ll admit, I hadn’t planned for that. I had been more/less consulting my Google maps to navigate my way to the shore and didn’t have a paper backup … The good news is that the SkyTower is pretty much visible from anywhere in Auckland and from there I could find my way back to my accommodations.
I made my first NZ friend upon getting back to my room. Meet George.No Junk Mail?
Started my walk heading north to make a big clock-wise loop around the city. Throughout my walk, I kept noticing that there seemed to be a recurrance of notes/instructions on the mailboxes regarding junk mail ... do these actually work? Does the postal worker actually sort out the junk? I never found a postal worker to ask ...