Highest Heights - 1-23-12

 “New Zealand is not a small country but a large village.” -Peter Jackson

If that aint New Zealand,  I don't know what is.

Again touching on the acropolis appeal in cities throughout the world, we traveled to a park called "one tree hill", a name that has quite a negative connotation due to the horrible television show of the same title.  Alas, there are no ties between the two and we had an awesome walk through the park that was incidentally and accidentally diverted through a farmers field which was full of sheep and their respective signs of occupation (poop).  It was messy work scaling the hill and no man came out unscathed.  All in all the approach was worth the breathtaking view, and for the first time I actually felt like I was truly in New Zealand.  Very picturesque experience, back dropped by New Zealand's largest city.

Professor Curtis at our meeting.

Prior to the climb up the hill we spent the morning at New Zealand's biggest university, Auckland University - just a few blocks from the Waldorf, where we stayed.  We had a meeting with the head of the Engineering department, which also had a concentration in Construction Management. Her specific field of study was disaster relief, so it was very interesting to hear first hand on the progress in Christchurch after the devastation of a massive earthquake in February 2011 and the subsequent aftershocks that are keeping anything from moving along at any sort of successful rate, due to insurance companies requirements for provided payment - which includes a no aftershock period of something like 30 days.  The whole city had been literally trembling almost daily ever since the earthquake.  On the same insurance note, there had been a rippling effect in the increase of rates throughout the country of almost 30%.  Shows how devastating and influential, internationally, this earthquake has been, and it made us even more excited to get to Christchurch and experience it for ourselves.

After a tour of the campus with some PhD students, we said our thank yous and left their University with some extremely impressive and valuable new knowledge.  Overall great morning.  One thing I came to learn, disappointingly in fact, is that Auckland is not wholly committed to the utilization of adaptive reuse.  Guess that will just give me some time off in this town to enjoy the rather modern and fresh architecture throughout the city.  Being a very hilly country,  with Auckland as no exception, you are either walking up or down a hill at all times - something to the like of San Francisco -until you finally make it to the harbor where everything plains out to an awesome picturesque bay setting that is the cities main hub for great food, drink, and nightlife.  What better place to spend the afternoon before we head up to the Sky Tower.

Group at One Tree Hill

 Viaduct Harbour - forgive the "Olde English" spelling - seems to be the place to be on most nights of the week for those well to do individuals throughout Auckland.  This, in turn, means high prices for our shallow pockets.  We did a bit of shopping around and found an awesome Irish pub that served up some mean lamb chops and great beer.  Not the cheapest of places, but the atmosphere and view along the Viaduct was absolutely worth the money spent.  Off to the sky tower to take in the views of Auckland at sunset from the tallest building in New Zealand.  The sights from One Tree Hill were spectacular, but from 190 some odd meters, you could really appreciate the cities location as a simple dot in the incredibly dynamic and aggressive landscape for which New Zealand is known.  Had a beer, psyched ourselves up or down - dependent on the personality - for bungee jumping in Queenstown in some 6 days (we had all by now monetarily committed ourselves to jumping out of a 134m gondola strapped to a large rubber band - awesome).

Happy Chinese New Year...

Thats a frakin' sunset.

Only shot of Viaduct Harbour I got that night.

View down the elevator shaft.

Enjoying the sunset, hahaha.

Ended the night with the long uphill walk home which was fortunately through a park - seems that New Zealand, along with Australia, take their city's parks very seriously.  Everything is getting a bit blurry now, writing this after having spent our time off in Queenstown.  Time for some serious concentration.

Cheers.