Highs and Lows

I'm talking about altitude, of course. Over the last week I've been to some of Auckland's lowest and highest points: Point Chevalier Beach and One Tree Hill.

No local would ever call it Point Chevalier Beach. Case in point--I was trying to tell someone here at International House that I had been there:

Me: "I went to Point Chevalier Beach today."

Patient Local: "Huh?"

Me: "Point Chevalier...I mean, uh, Point 'Chev"

Patient Local: "Oh, 'Chev Beach?"

Me: "Uh, yeah"."

Patient Local: "Sweet as."

(I don't know if I've mentioned it yet, but one of my favorite Kiwi phrases is "Sweet as." Kiwis put "as" after any adjective, without any additional modifiers. Things can be "sweet as," "small as," "easy as," and so forth. Example sentence? "Ay mate, that restaurant serves heaps of chips and L&P cheap as." More about L&P later).

Anyway, 'Chev Beach is about three bus "stages" away from Auckland CBD, to the Northwest. It's a small beach with a nice little playground/green space called Coyle Park next door. It was a beautiful day, and nice views were to be had of both the CBD and the Auckland Harbour Bridge. The beach was nice too, but there wasn't much else to do.

On the other end of the altitude spectrum, today I went over to One Tree Hill.

No, not the sappy teen drama on The WB (or The CW). One Tree Hill is the second highest point in Auckland, besides Mt. Eden, which I already climbed a few weeks ago. They went here on one of the first seasons of the Amazing Race, the first of four times that they were in Auckland (they also went to Mt. Eden).

One Tree Hill, or Maungakiekie, is a fairly controversial volcanic cone. Long story short: Maungakiekie was a very important and spiritual place for the native Maori. Along came Sir John Logan Campbell, the "Father of Auckland," who sort of appropriated the place for himself. When he died, he left instructions in his will to build an obelisk on One Tree Hill to serve as his gravesite, supposedly in "honor of his admiration of the Maori people." The sacred trees of One Tree Hill were cut down: one in the 1800s by some white guy, one in 1994 by Maori activists (the sign at the site called them "Maori protestors") and again in 2000. So now there are no trees on top of One Tree Hill, just John Logan Campbell's obelisk.

Apparently U2 wrote a song about it, which is where the title of the WB series comes from. I had never heard of it, so I heard it on Youtube at our blazing fast 20 Kb/sec download rate. It was OK, I guess. Being there was better. Plus there were sheep!