Sunday was a welcome day of sleeping in...'til the cows came home! I pushed right up to the last minute for my 11am check out time, then forced my exhausted self to go out and see some sites. I caught a bus and ventured out of the city to see one of 48 extinct volcanoes in Auckland. Mt Eden is the highest volcanic cone in the area at 196 m. It was a bit of a hike to the top as I unintentionally took the long way around (vehicular rather than pedestrian). I encountered about 10 or more cows grazing along the hillside and standing on the footpath between me and the tip of the volcano. Hmmm… they won out. I jumped down off the path and onto the roadway.
You can see the entire Auckland area from the top – all the bays and the land between Manukau Harbour and Hauraki Gulf – and look 50 m down the volcano’s crater.
Here's the volcanic crater and one side of the cityscape.
DO NOT ENTER CRATER!
And here I am in the crater, well along it really, on the footpath - I adhered.
I took the bus back into the city, wondered around the harbour in the ‘City of Sails’, and finished my day with a stroll along Queen Street and fish ‘n chips at a pub up and alley way. Mid-afternoon, I took a shuttle bus to the airport and left New Zealand to return to Melbourne. What a full, wonderful, exhilarating, and exhausting week!
