Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Waitakere: April 17, 2006
Today we drove west of Auckland through a ring of suburbs to Waitakere Regional Park, located on a hilly, forested peninsula. We drove to a visitor center whose viewing platforms offered amazing views of coast. In front a tallwood carving (like totem pole) celebrated the phallic supremacy of Maori warriors. One certainly wouldn’t see public art like this in an American park!
We then followed one of the most terrifying roads in New Zealand to Piha Beach (where we ate lunch) and later to Bethels and Karekare Beaches (the latter was featured in the Jane Campion movie ‘The Piano.” Our route presented an extreme version of the classic NZ “scenic tourist route”: far too narrow for the 2-lane traffic it carried, zig-zagging across the walls of a heavily forested canyon with no shoulders – only overhanging cliffsides or sharp drop-offs into the abyss. Though I sounded the horn at every bend, several times we met cars coming in the opposite direction in “our lane” and only my desperate dexterity at the wheel spared our lives. We had long ago realized that we were much better driving on the left-side of the road than most Kiwis are on either side of the road, but the natives here have no fear of death and no capacity to imagine what might lie around the next curve. Even our tortuous drives along the ridge of the Banks Peninsula outside of Christchurch or into Milford Sound did not prepare us for the adrenaline rush of this experience. Having faced hazardous road conditions each day, no wonder Kiwis seem to enjoy bungy-jumping and tower-diving.* The waves along these beaches are very tall, providing spectacular surfing opportunities, but by the time we reached Bethels Beach in the late afternoon, the wind was blowing the tops off the waves, and the sands and water were deserted. The tall cliffs on the near side of the cove the sheltered this enormous beach were in deep shade and the general sense of desolation was accentuated by a sign warning of quicksand (but not indicating where this hazard might be encountered). Our trip back to Auckland city took only one hour but might have been much shorter had the names of the roads been posted at the major intersections. (The principles of road-signage for the entire road system of New Zealand seem to be based on those used in Boston). Still, we arrived safely at Ponseby Road and ate a nice meal at a restaurant named “GPK” before returning back to The New President.
* It is worth mentioning that every Kiwi's favorite expression is "No worries."
We then followed one of the most terrifying roads in New Zealand to Piha Beach (where we ate lunch) and later to Bethels and Karekare Beaches (the latter was featured in the Jane Campion movie ‘The Piano.” Our route presented an extreme version of the classic NZ “scenic tourist route”: far too narrow for the 2-lane traffic it carried, zig-zagging across the walls of a heavily forested canyon with no shoulders – only overhanging cliffsides or sharp drop-offs into the abyss. Though I sounded the horn at every bend, several times we met cars coming in the opposite direction in “our lane” and only my desperate dexterity at the wheel spared our lives. We had long ago realized that we were much better driving on the left-side of the road than most Kiwis are on either side of the road, but the natives here have no fear of death and no capacity to imagine what might lie around the next curve. Even our tortuous drives along the ridge of the Banks Peninsula outside of Christchurch or into Milford Sound did not prepare us for the adrenaline rush of this experience. Having faced hazardous road conditions each day, no wonder Kiwis seem to enjoy bungy-jumping and tower-diving.* The waves along these beaches are very tall, providing spectacular surfing opportunities, but by the time we reached Bethels Beach in the late afternoon, the wind was blowing the tops off the waves, and the sands and water were deserted. The tall cliffs on the near side of the cove the sheltered this enormous beach were in deep shade and the general sense of desolation was accentuated by a sign warning of quicksand (but not indicating where this hazard might be encountered). Our trip back to Auckland city took only one hour but might have been much shorter had the names of the roads been posted at the major intersections. (The principles of road-signage for the entire road system of New Zealand seem to be based on those used in Boston). Still, we arrived safely at Ponseby Road and ate a nice meal at a restaurant named “GPK” before returning back to The New President.
* It is worth mentioning that every Kiwi's favorite expression is "No worries."
# posted by Ken @ 10:53 PM 
