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Tag: Auckland

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By Nora_Wolcott

Thanks to the University of Auckland's forgiving exam schedule, I had a full week free before the start of my exams this month. I used this time to go explore the Coromandel Peninsula, and embark on what was likely to be the last major tramping trip I'd be able to take in New Zealand. So, on a Wednesday morning I picked up my rental car and headed South, towards what would prove to be a thrilling week of adventure.

My first day kicked off with a trip to Hot Water Beach, a beach formed over a bed of hot lava. Because of this phenomenon, if you wait until low tide at the beach and dig a large hole, it will fill with hot water from the lava-heated springs below. I knew this in advance, but somehow didn't expect the water to be quite as hot as it was. The water, I later found out, was about 65 degrees Celsius, or around 150 Fahrenheit. In comparison, when I had visited Rotorua I had found any of the hot springs above 42C to be too warm for me, so this was definitely off the table. Still, the beach was beautiful, with turquoise waters and none of the sulfuric stench I had grown to associate with geothermal activity. Back at the hostel I was staying at, I was lucky enough to meet a wide array of other solo travellers, from countries ranging from Austria to fellow Americans, who were eager to join up for some adventuring. This became my group for the next day, when we headed off to visit Cathedral Cove.

After seeing almost the entirety of the North Island, I can conclusively say that Cathedral Cove is my newfound favorite spot. To get to the Cove requires a 90 minute hike, weeding out some of the prospective tourists, and includes detours to several other smaller beaches and lookout points. It was one of those first lookout points that we we hiked up to, atop one of the many cliffs overlooking the Cove, from which I saw a large ray swimming languidly through the waters below. The water in the Cove is so clear that, even from the top of this cliff, it was easy to make out the ray swimming amongst the waves, getting covered by sand then shaking it off again. After this sighting, we hiked down into the cove itself, which is full of waterfalls and caves and huge rocky formations, pieces of the cliffs now part of the ocean. We continued exploring the cove until sunset, which rewarded us with a startlingly pink sky over the Pacific. I headed back to the hostel more than satisfied, and went to bed early in anticipation of the next couple days.

...continue reading "One Last Tramp"

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By Nora_Wolcott

As I enter into the last month of my time in New Zealand, unfortunately cut short by the summer classes I have to take back in DC, I'm doing my best to really get the fullest experience of this beautiful country. This was made a little easier with the arrival of the greatest travel buddy, my boyfriend Bryant, who flew the whole 30 hours from the District to NZ to spend the past 10 days travelling the country with me. The whole trip was jam packed, with way too much to write here, but we did hit three major spots which I'll go into: Rotorua, Wellington and the Marlborough Sounds.

Our first stop was Rotorua, where we spent a weekend taking in the alien geothermal landscape of this volcanic town. Rotorua is known by the locals as Rotten-rua, and for good reason; the geothermal activity that makes this town such a hotspot (literally) for tourists is derived from the sulfur vents that waft rotten-egg fumes throughout the area. The smell wasn't so bad in town, or in our nice secluded AirBnb, but when we got into the geothermal parks it was fairly sickening. The first day was spent bathing in Rotorua's geothermal pools, starting with Kerosene Creek, a naturally formed creek complete with picturesque waterfalls, about the temperature of a hot shower. The creek was enchanting, but after walking around wet in the winter weather we were more than ready for our second stop, the Polynesian Spa. The geothermal baths there drew from the creek water, but were filtered into large hot tub-esque pools overlooking the lake. The whole experience was as relaxing as promised, and well worth the three showers it took to wash the sulfur smell from my hair. We kicked off our second day in Rotorua with a walk around the Wai-o-tapu geothermal park, where the water bubbled at over 200 degrees and turned the landscape bright orange and sulfuric yellow. The alien landscape was a sharp contrast with the river we rafted down later that day, all silver fern and turquoise rapids. The rafting was a real high point of the trip, as we went down the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the world standing at 5m, plunging under the rapids before righting ourselves at the surface.

After a day of class for me and a day hiking the volcanic islands around Auckland for Bryant, we hopped on a plane to Wellington, where we spent the night in an AirBnb perched on a hill, whose glass walls overlooked the Pacific harbor. But we'll get back to Wellington in a second, because the next morning we were off to Picton, the charming town center of the Malborough Sounds, at the Northern tip of the South Island. After a 3.5hr ferry ride spent playing Gin Rummy and admiring the cliffs passing by, we touched down in this quiet town. The uphill walk to our third AirBnb greeted us with views of the Sounds so stunning that, as we checked in, we decided to cancel the trip we had planned to Abel Tasman and stay in Picton an extra night. Picton was shockingly sunny for an NZ town, a living postcard lined with Palm Trees and mountains. Over our three days there, we hiked the "Snout" peninsula, spent a day sea kayaking through the mountains and tried our hand at mountain biking the many trails hidden among the Sounds. Our day kayaking was undeniably my favorite, the cherry on top being the four fur seals that swam alongside us as we made our way through the channels of the Pacific. Mountain biking was both thrilling and terrifying, leaving us muddy but exhilarated, just in time for our second ferry back into Wellington. ...continue reading "Travelling for Two"

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By Nora_Wolcott

After a long week full of lab reports and looming exams, I needed a vacation. Luckily, that's just what I got, with a long weekend spent in Canberra, the capital of Australia. You may be wondering why I didn't venture into one of Australia's more well known cities, say, Sydney or Melbourne. This is because I went to Canberra for a very specific reason, to celebrate my cousin's 21st birthday. I had thought that, because by 21 in Australia you have already been legal to drink for 3 years, this birthday would not be as big a milestone as in the US. I thought wrong. For Australians the 21st is like a sweet 16th, obligating a huge party complete with family and speeches. This was a stoke of luck for me, as I rarely get to see my Australian family (whom I love dearly), and to have them all in the same place at one time offered a great opportunity to see everybody.

I flew for Berra very early Friday morning, a 4am wakeup almost made up for by the smooth flights that took me from Auckland, through Sydney to Canberra. While I have spent a fair bit of time in Melbourne, where my family is based, I have never visited the capital city. I was in for a treat, Canberra was a tight-knit college town with beautiful galleries and museums, specifically the National Gallery and War Memorial, which I had a great time touring. I also got a look at the Parliament House, an architecturally striking building and the meeting place for the Australian Parliament. The weather was unfortunately gloomy, and a good 20 degrees colder than Auckland, a fact I had not bargained for. New Zealand's small size as an island keeps temperatures stable, with summers in the high 70's and winters in the 60's. Meanwhile, Canberra is in the center of a large continent and experiences real seasons, with summers upwards of 100 and winters down in the 40's.

The weather didn't stop us from having a great celebration of my cousin Adela's 21st, and I had the best night dancing, drinking and having conversations that inevitably devolved into American politics. After an evening of reconnecting with the family I so rarely see, and reminiscing about the years past, us college kids made our way to the local dive Mooseheads. The joint is such a staple of the city, that the man I sat next to on the plane ride back, after hearing I was coming from Canberra, asked only "did you go to Mooseheads?". The next day was sunny and felt more like the country I knew, and was spent watching Adela play footie before I had to board a plane ride back home.  All in all it was an excellent trip, and I hope I can make it down under sometime soon in the upcoming years.

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By Nora_Wolcott

Today I expected to be writing about my spectacular tramp across the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, a 9-hour climb that is by all accounts one of the best in the country. But things don't always work out as expected. Here's how things went down: on Saturday I packed my tramping bag with everything I would need for the climb, including a hat, gloves, jackets and enough food to last me a full day. Accompanied by my best tramping friend Morgan I went down to the Auckland City car rental, and we were soon on our way to Tongariro National Park. After 4 hours of driving we arrived at Howard's Lodge, a small but comfortable hostel where we spent the night with 8 other trampers in bunk beds. In the morning we woke up at the crack of dawn, early enough to catch one of the few shuttles to the base of the mountain. This was where our adventure began, but not the one we expected.

Upon dropping our key off at reception, the worn-out looking receptionist greeted us with, "you do know the shuttles are cancelled for today, right?". We did not. Apparently there was a blizzard on the mountain, and the shuttle service had decided that morning not to let anyone climb for the day. With that we packed all our alpine tramping gear into the rental car, and sat deliberating on what to do next. We had come all this way, and were determined to make the most of our time. So, with that in mind, we headed North to Lake Taupo. The fog was so thick on the winding roads down we had to pull over a few times to let it clear, as we could barely see the road in front of us. However, when we made it to Taupo the fog evaporated altogether, leaving clear and sunny skies.

With newfound energy we hiked up Huka falls, glacial rapids the icy blue color we had become familiar with during our South Island trip. It was a short but beautiful hike, and yielded some great views of the waterfall, engorged from a night of heavy rain. After that, we used the money we had been refunded from our shuttle to Tongariro to book a boat out to see the Maori cliff carvings. I had fairly low expectations for this, which were completely surpassed by the carvings, which stretched high into the cliffs surrounding Lake Taupo. The boat we took out was a gorgeous little catamaran, which gave us plenty of time to soak up the sun while admiring the carvings.

...continue reading "Change of Plans"

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By Nora_Wolcott

This week was my last week of classes, leading up to a month-long exam break, during which I only have three exams. Preparing for a good deal of free time, I decided to kick off this month by doing the Tongariro Northern Circuit, a gruelling 4-day hike spanning almost 50km and rising almost 2,000m in elevation. The track promised spectacular views of the Northern volcanic landscape, and I was thrilled to be going with a large group of avid young trampers like myself. I had attempted to do the shorter version of this hike at the beginning of the month, then again the previous week, each time having my plans cancelled due to the highly changeable alpine weather. As luck would have it, it was the day before the hike was set to begin that I got the news: there had been an avalanche warning on the mountain, meaning that our trip had to be cancelled. This was consequently not the first, or the second, but the third time I had tried and failed to complete this tramp, and left me with a solid four day gap in my otherwise thoroughly planned schedule. So, disappointed but determined to make the best of the situation, I went about planning four days of activity in Auckland.

Since, at this point, I have spent a fair amount of time in Auckland, I sometimes settle into the mindset that I have to travel somewhere else to do something interesting. This past weekend has entirely disproved that theory, with my real introduction to underground Auckland. The city is such an international hub, home to the only international airport in the country and eternally bustling with tourists like myself, that it can take some work to get to the heart of the people that really define the area. Over the weekend I ate at small Kiwi-owned bistros, shopped around local craftsmen shops, and explored neglected boroughs. However, a breakthrough moment for me in my endeavor to really know the city happened when i discovered Auckland's underground theatre scene. Looking for something to do on a Saturday night, branching out from our usual pub spots, my friend suggested to me that we try and see a play. As it happened, that night was the closing night of "Cult Show", a breakout feminist manifesto at The Basement Theatre. The venue was a blackbox theatre space inside a bar, filled with the tattooed, pierced, bearded millenial crowd baby boomers love to mock. I felt right at home.

The play itself was the kind of avante-guard contemporary work that I love, making men out of fruit and throwing water at the audience, all the while engaging in a real, thought-provoking dialogue about modern feminism. Because Cult Show was produced by the theatre, it was a real New Zealand play, taking a deep dive into the NZ Women's Archives and introducing me to historical women I'd never heard of before. I was really intrigued by the debates on Maori oppression, the closest New Zealand parallel to the struggle of African American women towards intersectional feminism, something I'd barely heard discussed in the touristy museums I'd been visiting. It did what good theatre should do, challenge the viewer, and left me really questioning the history of this country I'd been readily accepting. Ultimately, the underground theatre scene of Auckland yielded a better look at Kiwi culture than all the museums claiming to do just that, proving that it takes more than a few months to truly understand the character of a city.

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By Nora_Wolcott

After a long exam week, I've had time to be a bit introspective about this whole experience. And, with no wild adventures to report, I thought I'd give a run down of all the things I miss most about living in the States, and all the things I'll miss when I return home.

The things I miss about the States are inevitably food-centred, so bear with me.

  1. Good Mexican Food- NZ is so far from Mexico they seem to have lost any concept of what Mexican food actually is. Appropriations include restaurants like Mexicali, with watery quinoa and borderline offensive drinks like "cartel".
  2. Chairs With Arms- chairs here do not have arms.
  3. Cheap Produce- with almost everything having to be imported from far away, the vast majority of things like fresh produce are prohibitively expensive.
  4. New York Pizza- all pizza here tastes like frozen pizza, and the closest I've come to a decent slice was still far too deep dish for my taste.
  5. Friends and Family- honestly this should be first on the list, because the people back home are what make it home.

...continue reading "What I Miss, and What I Will Miss"

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By Nora_Wolcott

When I joined the Auckland Tramping Club, "tramping" being the equivalent of "hiking" back in the states, what I was envisioning as a thorough tramp was an uphill walk through the NZ bush. However, after doing quite a bit of tramping on my South Island trip, I can conclusively say that New Zealand tramping is on a whole different level than US hiking. This is in part simply due to the geography of NZ, a volcanic island riddled with mountains. Even in Auckland, situated in one of the flattest parts of the island, my walk from the grocery store takes me up what feels  like Mt. Everest.

At this point I have completed what I would consider three major tramps, summiting Stony Bay Mountain (Akaroa), Key Summit (Milford Sound) and Roy's Peak (Wanaka), all roughly 8 hour endeavours that left my legs and lungs burning. I found that sometime in the first hour I reach a high point of muscle burn, and if I push through I can attain a plateau of numb soreness. This leaves the biggest physical obstacle for me as my athsma, which gets worse with exercise and cold, two factors that increase dramatically as you work your way to the top of a mountain. However, I've learned that after pushing though the first major altitude jump my lung capacity basically levels out, and along with my numb muscles I generally hit a sort of second wind in the second half of the summit. The real reward, as cliche as it sounds, is the sense of accomplishment gained by reaching the top.

After all this tramping, I feel confident in attempting some of the most notoriously steep summits on the North Island, which I'm sure you'll be hearing more about in the upcoming weeks. By the end of April I hope to have climbed the Tongariro Alpine Crossing as well as The Pinnacle in the Coromandel Peninsula. These are both multi-day tramps that have been ranked at a higher difficulty than any of the climbs I have previously attempted. In anticipation of this, I have been trying to keep myself in shape with lots of uphill cardio (which there is no shortage of in a hilly city like Auckland) as well as more frequent rounds at the gym with my tramping buddies who have acted as my surrogate coaches through this whole ordeal.

...continue reading "Becoming a Mountaineer"

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By Nora_Wolcott

In the spirit of being the most relaxed country I’ve ever visited, NZ’s University system allows us two full weeks of Fall Break (not Spring break, as I’ve repeatedly and incorrectly called it). Given this opportunity, I seized the moment and bought a round trip ticket to Christchurch in the South Island, and with some of my closest international student friends embarked on an ambitious South Island tour. The trip took us from Christchurch down through Queenstown, to Fiordland on the Southern-most tip, and back up to Christchurch to return to Auckland. As I am typing this I am sitting at the Christchurch Airport gate, and am having quite a bit of trouble finding a way to summarize such a comprehensive trip in a few paragraphs. I’ll have to settle for giving each day an overview, so here goes:

 

Day 1: We flew into Christchurch late Good Friday afternoon, and my first impression was that what people had described to me as a “city” was more like a large town, fairly spread out and connected by highways. My second impression was that it was a good 10 degrees colder than Auckland, and I would discover that as we moved farther south it got as low as 30 degrees below Auckland temperatures. That night we ate fantastic Indian food in town, and explored the low key bar scene before settling down in our AirBnb.

 

Day 2: The first real day of our trip was spent at Kaikoura, a peninsula North of Christchurch famous for the sperm whale pods that frequent its waters. After a nerve wracking 3 hour drive up from Christchurch we hopped on a whale tour ship, on which we had 3 sperm whale sightings, along with several fur seals, albatrosses, and a large pod of Dusky and Hector dolphins. It was a gorgeous sunny day, and I almost didn’t mind all the tourists throwing up on our boat. For someone who loves marine life as much as me this was possibly the best day of our trip. ...continue reading "The Wild South"

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By Nora_Wolcott

This week was a little different from my previous weeks in Auckland for one major reason: my parents came to visit! Yes, in the spirit of being the amazing support system they are, my parents flew 30 hours from Buffalo, New York to spend 6 days of their spring break (the life of academics) in New Zealand with me. Unfortunately now that I’m almost entirely based in DC I rarely see my family anymore, and it’s always great to spend time with them. So when I stepped into the well-lit brunch joint I was meeting them at, it was the first time I had seen them since Christmas. Beyond the obvious perk of seeing my family after a long winter, their trip to UofA gave me a great opportunity to travel around the North Island, and show off my newfound New Zealand expertise. For the first three days after their arrival they left me to tend to my classes while they went gallivanting off around Rotorua, a stunning collection of geothermal hot springs just a few hours South of Auckland. For me, it was after they returned from this trip that our vacation together really began.

We spend Wednesday night at a lovely bistro my Kiwi friends had recommended to me, in the center of the bourgeois suburban district of Auckland, Ponsonby. At the restaurant, Augustus bistro, we ate fresh prawns and snapper by candlelight, catching up on the goings on of my life under the fern-filled ceiling. The next morning we went on our first real adventure, waking up at 6am to catch an early ferry to Waiheke Island, a gorgeous island just off the Eastern coast, that Obama would visit just one day later. This was the kind of trip that was just a little pricier than I can afford on my college budget, and thus the perfect thing to do with my family. We took a wine, cheese and olive oil tour across the island, wandering through the vineyards and olive trees under the New Zealand sun. The island offered panoramic views of the Auckland skyline across the glittering Pacific, lined with rugged cliffs and black sand beaches. My parents especially appreciated the gorgeous weather and scenery, as they were coming from 3 feet of snow back in my hometown. The Waiheke Wine Tour was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, however our next day’s activity very nearly topped it.

...continue reading "Parents Weekend Halfway Around the World"

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By Nora_Wolcott

As a Molecular Biology major at GW, I’m accustomed to spending long hours in the lab. Here, my friends in the UofA School of Science were shocked to learn this, as their system is quite different. Instead of having lab sections for each course, there are fieldtrips that take you to different exotic island locations to conduct scientific research. When I initially found out about this program I was less than thrilled, as it cuts into travel time I could’ve otherwise planned myself, an annoyance that has not fully dissipated. However, I have learned that there are several large perks to being an exchange student on these scientific field trips. The University pays for our transportation and lodging, a huge plus for a semi-broke college student trying to travel across this large island. In addition to this, they take me to locations I may have otherwise overlooked, as they are not always those advertised on TripAdvisor and similar travel sites. My weekend trip to Wenderholm State Park was an excellent example of this phenomenon.

I went on the Wenderholm trip for my General Ecology class, a course slightly outside of my usual scientific interests, so I was fairly skeptical about the trip. However, when we got to the location it was absolutely stunning. In order to reach the terrestrial ecology station we had to take an hour-long hike up a mountain, and though I consider myself fairly in-shape, by the time we got to the top I was panting like a dog. The view from the top was spectacular, all sheer cliffs and rocky islands stretching along the coast. Later in the day we made the trek back down to the beach to do some marine sampling. Under the shadow of a clay-streaked cliff we spent hours surveying periwinkle species on the shore. Towards the end of the day the wind began to pick up, and we were completely unsheltered on the beach, so I can’t say I was reluctant to leave; but all in all it was a great day, and I’d take it over 4 hours in an Orgo lab any day.

This was not my first field trip, and it won’t be the last. A couple weeks ago I made a weekend trip to Goat Island for Marine Ecology, and in mid-April I will take a longer 4 night trip to Whangeri. The Goat Island lab was fairly rigorous, but also a beautiful free trip to a location I may not have otherwise been able to rent a car to see. My mid-semester trip to Whangeri is also an exciting landmark for me, as I don’t know if I would’ve been able to stop back at this location in the 3 months I have left. Ultimately I really do enjoy the fieldtrip system, and if I had any sway with GW’s Bio department I would urge them to incorporate such hands-on experience into their curriculum. While there aren’t exactly locations like Goat Island or Wenderholm near DC, I wouldn’t mind taking a trip to Virginia Beach for Genetics, or the forests of Maryland for Developmental.

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