Yesterday I was sitting in my room just after getting back from class, and Carlos, my fellow track runner from Bates knocks on my door asking if I wanted to join him and two other guys from the dorm for a run. I figured, why not? And threw on my stuff to join them. One of the guys with us is a New Zealand, and I think even Auckland native and we were following him to some mountain that was supposed to make for a good running loop (note that it was actually not raining while we were running, we got really lucky).
After following him into the suburbs and about 2 and a half miles from the dorm we came to the mountain. And me being the hero that I am I proceeded to hit the hill as hard as I could. Unfortunately for me the hill/mountain was bigger than I thought, so I was exhausted when I finally reached the top to one of the coolest sights I’ve ever seen, at least while running. The path leading to the top came up on the shorter side of a giant grassed-over crater, probably something along the lines of 300 feet deep, and quite steep. Around the edge of the crater was a path that looked out over Auckland in every direction with no visual obstruction. We could see downtown Auckland, with the sky tower and in the other direction several more, but seemingly smaller mountains and over the harbor one really big one in the distance. Truly a breath taking sight, which wasn’t great for me since having just killed myself running up it I was short of breath anyway. We hung out at the top for about 15 minutes taking in the sights, but since the sun was already down (I think I missed the sunset by 5-10 minutes) and it was getting cold we had to head back.
This morning I grabbed my camera, and my umbrella because we are supposed to be getting yet another rain storm this weekend, and I headed back to the mountain to get some pictures of the amazing sights. So, starting from the bottom, here is a little picture tour of the trek up.
The very bottom.
And that right there, is when my camera stopped working. That’s not the summit there in the background, it’s like a little hill before the final climb to the top (tricked me when I was running up it >.<). But the camera decided it wanted to stop taking pictures, and no amount of fiddling from me was able to convince it otherwise. I stood on the top for seriously about 15 minutes trying everything I could to get it to work, but nothing-doing. It was kind of funny walking around on the top in a t-shirt with all the Aucklanders being wrapped in big jackets, it was like 55 degrees out, so nice and warm to me but cold considering what they are used to.
Anyway sorry about the lack of pictures, but since my camera does seem to have kicked the bucket, unless maybe my good ol’ techno-master father can help me put it right, it would seem like that is probably the last of them for a while.