Author: richwest3

January 2014

Looking at Auckland as a whole, there are several things that stand out. The first thing the eye notices is the Skytower: well-designed, distinctly beautiful, and the tallest structure in Auckland. The second thing about Auckland is that it’s a port city and very much embraces the sea, its downtown shoreline devoted to all things shipping and boating related, especially sailboats. I’d say sailing is the theme of this city, its heart, and even those who don’t care for sailing can enjoy looking at sailboats from the comfort of a steady shore.

While boats are scattered about in marinas and on the water, the most interesting concentration of them is in Viaduct Harbour. Full of restaurants that spill out onto walkways overlooking the water, boating supply stores, a boating museum, the headquarters of Emirates Team New Zealand (of America’s Cup fame), and berthed superyachts from all over the world, it is quite the yachtie kind of place! People have differing tastes as to what they like to do when visiting a city, but I can’t imagine anyone has ever visited Auckland and not walked around the Viaduct.

Still, there’s another interesting feature to appreciate about this city: the individual hills that dot the landscape, remnants of old volcanoes. These volcanoes are one of the things that make Auckland unique. There are about 50 of them scattered throughout the central area of the North Island, but the few mentioned below are special and featured sights in Auckland.

Auckland Domain (Pukekawa)

Many of the world’s great cities have a large central park, often with a museum, flower beds, expansive green lawns and large trees. This area in Auckland is called Auckland Domain and sits on the remnants of Pukekawa, one of Auckland’s oldest volcanoes. The Auckland Museum sits at the highest point, on top of the hill, while beautiful stretches of lawn and grand old trees cover the rest of it.

Auckland Domain has many walking paths, and walking around here is always enjoyable. Our favorite was a path called Lover’s Lane that meandered through a gully lush with subtropical vegetation. We also loved the area’s giant trees.

Unfortunately with all the walking it took to get to and enjoy the Auckland Domain, we never had the energy to tackle the museum, but we’ve heard good things about it. Below, some photos of Auckland Domain (you can click to enlarge and scroll through photo galleries in this post.)

Mt Eden

This was the first volcano we visited in Auckland, and we found it pretty astonishing. It’s the tallest of the old volcanoes and still has its crater, now a big grassy bowl. Like the other volcanoes in Auckland, one can choose to walk up, bike up, or drive up through beautiful parkland to incredible views from the top. We’ve already done a blog post about our first visit, but coming back this year we found it just as amazing. Below, a couple of photos, one showing the third of Auckland’s great volcanoes: One Tree Hill.

One Tree Hill (Maungakiekie)

While Mount Eden is the highest, One Tree Hill is among Auckland’s largest volcanoes with huge areas of parkland, historic sites, and even a planetarium. There are also sheep, many many sheep, that graze on the extensive lawns and grassy areas. The entire area is called Cornwall Park, and it’s Auckland’s largest park.

One Tree Hill is another volcano we visited last year, making the drive to the top to see the obelisk and views. This year we came to walk around the park at the base of the volcano, but one of the most striking things was driving though it. The streets were thickly lined with magnificent trees! Near the front gate where pohutukawas, followed by huge specimens of other trees as we drove along. We parked at the information center and cafe, perched on a slope overlooking large expanses of lawn and more huge trees. This area seemed so big that it was a surprise to find we could walk all the way around the bottom of the volcano in 25-minutes.

We did just that, taking 40 minutes with photo stops. It was a beautiful walk with more huge trees, this time pine and oak, and lots of sheep. This park was definitely one of the highlights of Auckland.

Albert Park

There’s one more park of note, this one residing on an old, low-lying volcano near the center of the city: Albert Park. Compared to the other parks it’s very small, but it has a lot of pohutukawa trees and a lovely formal garden at its center. There’s also the Auckland Art Gallery, the city’s premier art museum and housed in a building that’s a work of art in itself. It’s free to the public and definitely worth a look.–Cyndi

January, 2014

While central Devonport is the North Shore’s key sight, the surrounding area also has worthwhile spots. Sharing the tip of North Shore’s peninsula is Maungauka North Head Reserve. Maungauka is the area’s other dormant volcano. Like Mt. Victoria, this hill was once a military encampment with underground tunnels and gun emplacements. Now, it’s a grassy reserve with trees and walkways for nature lovers, historic relics for history buffs, and an upper parking area for hiking avoiders. It’s not as high as Mt. Victoria, but its views are impressive.

Not surprisingly, we chose to drive instead of walk to the upper lot. Still, there was plenty of walking to do once we got there, including a short hike to get to the tippy-top of the hill for photo ops and fantastic views. Other visitors were picnicking on the grass, walking through the tunnels, or watching the short films offered in the historic military buildings. This place had something for everyone and could easily fill an afternoon.

(Below, a few photos from North Head Reserve–you can click to enlarge and scroll through photos).

Below North Point’s east side sits a beach called Cheltenham, and beyond that is another former military site that’s now a park, the Fort Takapuna Historic Reserve (both of which are visible the first photo in the gallery above). It’s not all that well known, but its low grassy hills and seaside location make it a particularly nice area to take a stroll. If we lived here, we’d visit the volcano hills, but this is where we’d actually take regular walks.

Just north of Fort Takapuna is another of North Shore’s popular beaches, Little Neck Beach. It was nice enough, but now that we’d visited North Shore’s best-known beaches, our favorite was still the beach we first visited, Takapuna Beach. –Cyndi

Below, a few photos of Little Neck Beach, the Fort Takapuna reserve, and a view of Cheltenham and North Head.

January, 2014

New Zealand has three historic and beautiful waterfront villages: Russell, Devonport and Akaroa (the latter in the South Island). We were already very familiar with Russell (in the Bay of Islands) but had only briefly visited Devonport the previous year. This season, we hoped to spend more quality time there.

Devnonport is very much like Russell with historic buildings, quaint cottages, big trees, and a beach. Its harborside location is protected from ocean swells and has fairly flat water. Across the channel sit Auckland’s eastern suburbs, and boats sailing by make this a painting-worthy scene. In all, Devonport is a very pleasant place to be. I think it was summed up best in photos we took the previous year, which I’ll recycling here:

Aside from its seaside beauty, the general Devonport area has two dormant volcanoes which are now reserves, terrific places to visit for their city and harbor views. We decided to start this Devonport visit by checking out the volcano that overlooks the town: Mount Victoria.

People on foot enjoy taking the walk up Mount Victoria. People with cars wonder if they, too, should walk up and get some exercise. We certainly considered it before guiltily driving to the upper parking area. Mount Victoria, once an active volcano, is now a tall grassy hill with tree-strewn slopes. The view from up top is certainly nice, and for those who like such things, there’s a disappearing gun, basically a hidden canon meant to surprise invaders, from the 1800s.

Below, some photos from our visit to Mount Victora, including a photo of the disappearing gun. The “mushrooms” are air vents for a below-ground work area. (Click to enlarge and scroll though galleries in this post.)

Next, we headed to the central area of Devonport and re-acquainted ourselves with its beach, pier, and the really lovely Windsor Reserve park with some very big trees. Finally, we wandered up the main street and spotted a nice-looking Thai restaurant, Monsoon, where we enjoyed an early dinner. Below, some photos from our visit to town.

Over the course of our month-long stay in Bayswater, we visited Devonport regularly. Takapuna was our primary town for eateries, but Devonport was a nice alternative for a more relaxed outing and our go-to place for a chocolate fix. Devonport is home to one of our two favorite chocolate shops in all of New Zealand, and it was fun to enjoy regular visits. (Note: Our other favorite is Makana Confections located in Northland and Blenheim.)

And while we can’t claim to have thoroughly scouted out Devonport’s restaurants, we did have a couple of very nice meals. Aside from Monsoon, we went to a British pub called The Patriot which had some good English food and great beer. Another favorite spot was a Mediterranean restaurant called Manuka. Not only was the food terrific, but they had a nice big awning under which to sit and be protected from the sea breezes. We generally avoid outdoor tables, but we comfortably enjoyed an evening meal, sidewalk-cafe style.

One more nifty spot was the Devonport Stone Oven Bakery and Cafe, a local institution very popular for its bread, baked goods and cafe meals. Below, a few photos of these favorite spots in town.

In all, Devonport was a nice find and one of the best reasons to stay in the Bayswater Marina, but having a car was essential to get to and from the area.–Cyndi

February 9, 2020 at about 9:30 PM

We’ve started watching the weather for a couple reasons: getting to Australia next month and maybe getting out for a short, local cruise before that. Tonight, the two models we look at are WAY out of sync. Here there are side by side – from PredictWind…

On the left is PredictWind’s PWG model and on the right is the ECMWF model. Both are usually very good. Here, ECMWF shows a cyclone that passes over the northern tip of New Caledonia and on Saturday, has dropped south off the coast of Australia. PWG shows the low above New Cal for a bit and then it dissipates.

This is both educational and uncharacteristically fun for us to watch. We can observe without the usually stress of having to pick weather for an imminent passage. It’ll be interesting to see what really happens with this low or cyclone. I’ll try to remember to post an update here with the results. -Rich

Update, February 13, 2020 (4 days later)

Below are PWG and ECMWF as they appear now. It looks like ECMWF is the winner, at least so far. The PredictWind models are now showing the cyclone pretty much as ECMWF (and GFS) did four days ago.

Update, February 15, 2020:

Well, it moved just a little faster than ECMWF forecast, but it’s clear that they are the winner. The cyclone remnants are pretty close to where ECMWF said it would be six days ago. Even PWG has come around and today looks almost exactly like ECMWF.

I think that reinforces what we’ve thought: ECMWF is the best the furthest out and for open-ocean conditions. I’ll continue to look at PWG for a second opinion and especially in areas close to land as I think they model land effects better than the other models.

This concludes this test of the emergency weather forecasting system.

Update: February 17, 2020

We’re looking at a (remotely) possible weather window to sail to Oz on Sunday. Again, PWG and ECMWF couldn’t be much more opposite. I’m going to continue this story here over the next few days and we’ll see who’s right. Here’s today’s picture:

It seems that ECMWF is winning this one as well. Here’s what it’s showing 3 days later with both models now agreeing on a high pressure system in the Tasman on Sunday.

And here’s the final result… ECMWF wins again. PWG used to be my go-to model but lately, at least in the Tasman, it’s often getting it wrong. I wonder what’s up? -Rich

February 9, 2020

We couldn’t decide which shot we liked better, so you get both. These were taken handheld with our new Olympus OM-D EM-5 Mk II and a 12-200mm zoom lens. The image stabilizer in this camera is amazing and it should be great for the boat as both the lens and the body are weather resistant. -Rich