One thing I feel Auckland does well as a large city is keep large amounts of green space within the city. I explored two of them during my time in the city. The first was Mt. Eden.

The walk up Mt. Eden wasn’t overly difficult, just continuous. The view from the top gave a great panorama of the downtown and some of the islands in the harbour.

The other interesting part of Mt. Eden (along with the other hills in the area) is that they were ancient volcanoes. The crater on Mt. Eden was still pretty well defined.

The next day it was off to two other parks, Cornwall Park and One Tree Hill. Cornwall was a very enjoyable and easy walk.

After Cornwall, it was time to climb One Tree Hill. I wasn’t going to be alone it seemed.

I didn’t see any moo-moos, but I did run across some wooly beasts.

Turns out the name of the hill is a bit of a misnomer – the ‘One Tree’ part of the name no longer exists. Actually, a tree hasn’t stood on the peak for well over a century (whether cut down for vandalism or simply for firewood, it’s unknown). Instead, there is a large monument now.

The other nice thing (other than the howling wind I faced up there), was the hill gave very good views of BOTH coasts – This part of New Zealand is about the thinnest part between the Pacific Ocean on the east and the Abel Tasman sea on the west. NZ is less than 20km wide in this section, if I recall.