Nea Zooland

Our reconnaissance tour of the city wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the zoo. It has become almost a tradition of my travels, which was born in Bangkok, and has never again seen such terrible conditions.

The Auckland Zoo is a quintessential example of quality over quantity. Great care and thought has gone into every aspect of its design, from the enclosures, the viewing areas, and the overall layout. The most striking example of this was the African animals’ enclosure, ‘Pride-lands.’ The platforms around this area were at different elevations and proximity to the animals, allowing visitors a variety of viewing angles.

As per usual, most animals were reluctant to put on any kind of show for the camera wielding enthusiasts, but some were coaxed into action with a subtle hint of offered food. When we arrived at the Orangutan enclosure, the stars of the show were being less active than a bunch of inebriated snails, and were sitting about 40ft from the nearest lens. Considering the fact they weren’t even looking in my direction, I was amazed how fast they moved towards me, when I subtly revealed the banana from my pocket. Perhaps it was because it answered a question regarding the bulge in the pocket that they’d been contemplating. Whatever the reason, they were over in seconds and eyeing me up like a group of post-club students at a kebab house. The people behind us hadn’t seen the revelation take place and were amazed at my animal magnetism. OK, I’m not proud of it; I know it’s extremely cruel to taunt animals and that’s why I couldn’t just walk away without sharing the nutritious snack with them. And yes, I realize that they are on a carefully maintained diet, but there was no way I could just walk away after the looks they’d given me. I mean out of sympathy for them, not shared adulation.

The next weekend, our new flat mates offered to lend us their car so we could explore a little further a field than local bus routes. The car hadn’t been used in a while, so before we headed back to the flat to pick up supplies, we took a long detour around the bays of east Auckland. Each bay has a village growing on it that is so similar to the small towns we’d encountered on the coasts of Australia. The only difference was that these are separated by a 2 minute drive, not 4 hours, and are located a maximum of 10 minutes drive from the centre of the nearest city.

With a car full of petrol, and our bags full of food, we headed west and arrived at the Waitakere Ranges after a whopping 20 minutes of driving. We hadn’t planned to stop here, but I’m not the sort of chap who ignores the calls of hunger, and the cries were undeniable when we were approaching this point. It was only when we were sitting there, taking in our surroundings (and lunch) high up in the hills, and looking down towards the blue sea, that we thought about how far away this seemed, and how close it actually is. I apologise now if this line of thought becomes a cliché in my descriptions of New Zealand, but I’m constantly amazed at its truth. There is so much diversity to the country within such short distances.

Our mission for the day was to see some of the fabled black beaches of the west coast, and we’d picked ‘Piha’ as the place to start. ‘Piha’ was the birthplace of board riding in New Zealand and has since been the location for numerous national advances in life saving equipment and methodology. These are probably attributable to the necessity of invention, as the rips and currents are notoriously unforgiving. And if the sea doesn’t get you, the rocks probably will. The Australian surf team vowed never to compete here again after facing the NZ team in the 1950s (and never have). When the Iron Man contest was held here in 1997, canoes were snapped in two. We would definitely not be resuming our surfing lessons today.

The most striking aspect of ‘Piha’ is ‘Lion Rock’, which stands near the middle of the beach, defiantly facing the constant attack of the sea. You can climb this if desired, but we were nursing a couple of hangovers, so never left the safety of the sand.

It is a beautiful section of coast, that I’m sure will be revisited many times during the summer months, but I have to say, we felt a little let down. When told of black sand beaches, we expected sand that was darker than a witch’s soot-covered cauldron, not a dirty iron colour. Was this another case of the exercise of creative license in the advertising campaigns or simply our imaginations running a little over-actively? It turns out, that we just picked the wrong beach. Apparently, the really black beaches are further south. Whether that is true or not, will be revealed as our explorations continue.