A taste of Auckland

Last week, as well as the weekend before, I made a venture into Auckland. Surprisingly the driving itself was not as bad as I thought, but the parking was outrageous. It is first come, first served there, and if you don't get into a decent costing parking garage, your end up as I did... paying 24 dollars for an hour and ten minutes! Due to high housing costs, most people try to live outside the city, but this means high traffic volumes and many people competing for fewer parking spots. I did a very quick tour of Queen street where many of their little shops are, I popped into their shopping malls to look for supplies that I could not find in Warkworth, tried to view a house but got lost for almost an hour, eventually determining that I passed the street twice, and visited campus to get a few things taken care of. Unfortunately, sightseeing was a minimum and not due to the parking, but rather due to the weather. Both times I ventured into Auckland it rained. On my second trip, when I went to the University campus, it did clear long enough to take a few pictures. Much like UNBSJ, it has a mix of middle aged and newer buildings, but unlike it, there are some much older buildings. The main campus area is actually surrounded by the wall of an military barracks built when Auckland was much younger.

In the center of the photo is the main administrative building known by a few names including the unoriginal "clock tower" and the more affectionate (if I recall correctly) "wedding cake" building. The inside was beautiful when I first toured it with Dr. Andrew Jeffs. The outside is equally intricate and I will aim to get a picture when they are done with their construction.

In the case of both trips in, there was definitely anxiety brought on by the big city driving, traffic, rain, parking costs, having to use the washroom, and not knowing for certain where I was. In both cases I ended up driving back in the dark, and was always relieved when the sign for Warkworth popped up, as I know my way back to the lab from that point. On the second trip, the weather cleared on the way home, and this left for some beautiful skies. To unwind, I decided to take a few shots of the sky. The views are definitely spectacular, however despite not having the ambient light of the city around, the moon was extremely bright, and was for the majority of the week. It seemed almost like dusk, even in the wee hours of the morn.

The weather here is not lending for such beautiful skies, as it is currently raining with blustering winds. Tomorrow is to be much the same so I shall endeavour to get the last of my back-logged blogs done, with a tour of the Goat Island Reserve Intertidal. Anyway, I will leave you with a shot of the starry night as I myself pack up to go to my bunk and catch a few winks.