ATAAHUA ORA

When we bought our house (almost 2 years ago) one of the first things we did was install an alarm. During that process we agreed to install a monitored fire alarm as part of the system as well. All was good until yesterday, about midday I received a phone call from my monitoring company notifying me that my house is on fire and that fire brigade has been dispatched!

No need to say that both me and Lukas got home in record time, swapping stories about bonfires in the room lit by our proficient cats, electrical fires in the study (it would have to be a really big fire by then as the smoke detector is in the corridor outside the study and we ALWAYS close the door…) and wondering how much the bill for the fire brigade will be (note: you get 2 free callouts per year, after that its $1000. Yes, one thousand dollars.)

Turning into our street we almost crashed into the fire brigade - leaving. We couldn’t smell any smoke so we hailed them and asked what happened - apparently nothing. After a couple of minutes staring into windows and listening for “signs of fire”, those nice firemen decided not to force entry and just leave. It turned out to be a false alarm and the service guy didn’t find anything but advised us to turn off our automatic fly sprayer “just in case”. We did.

It didn’t help. We got another falsie at 4am this morning. This time we disconnected the smoke detector. We want to keep our second free call out for a while.

Most people living in Auckland have no idea that there is Mt Auckland just 70km north-west out of Auckland. It’s proper Maori name is Atuanui and it is marked with this name on some maps.

This Saturday, Greg and Helen organized an outing to conquer Mt Auckland and since the walk to the summit is not circular, we went in two groups, meeting for lunch at the top and swapping car keys.

The day started at 3am with Lukas getting a phone call on his on-call phone so immediately he went to work and didn’t return before 1pm. I drove to the meeting place and arrived there as the first person (somehow it’s much easier to be on time if you only have to think about one person getting ready. Hint, hint…)

One group started from the bottom and ascended the whole 305m vertical and the other group drove to a car park about 200m already vertically up and enjoyed a much less steeper approach but also much longer. I was in the second group, along with my parents and Slawek (friend from work) with his kids. We took the walk at a rather leisurely pace, stopping often for photos and taking detours to see kauri trees on the way.

As a result, we arrived at the summit about half an hour later than the first group - even though they left 20 mins later than us! However, the descend took us about an hour whereas they walked for nearly 2 hours, so it sort of evened out.

Along the way we saw great vistas across Kaipara Harbour and also towards the Kaipara Flats (which weren’t very flat) and most of the walk up was in a beautiful native New Zealand bush, full of Nikau palms and tree ferns.

Along the way we came across a number of “summits”, with Kuba, Slawek’s son exclaiming “we’re at the top” each time. But the real summit came as a bit of a surprise when we finally managed to penetrate the flax bushes growing around there and stumbled upon the other group sitting there and having lunch. No final climb, just a bit of a flat walk.

This is a very nice walk if you have about half a day, as in total it only takes about 3 hours. The downside is that it’s not circular, so you either have to have two groups or two cars or walk there and back the same route (never appealed to me much). After the walk all of the group drove to Parakai Hot Pools for a deserved soak in thermal pools and a bbq. I headed home as I didn’t feel my tattoo was ready for soaking just yet and had the bbq at home instead.

On Saturday we met up with Agata and Tom for a bonfire on the beach. It started to rain towards the evening but we wouldn’t be deterred by such a small detail, oh no! So we loaded the car with food and fire wood (couldn’t really count on collecting on the spot as it would all be wet) and we set off towards the Waitakeres. As soon as we started driving on Piha Rd it started to POUR down, like a wall of water. Since we made it this far we decided to continue driving to Karekare Beach and decide when we get there - as our luck would have it, it stopped raining the moment we parked our car and got out of it. Long story short, it took us two trips to transport first the food and then the firewood to “the cave” where we were going to have the bonfire. By the time we got to the cave even on the first trip it was already dark and we were ravenously hungry but still the second trip had to be made with the firewood. It must have been at least 20 mins each way!

The cave was more of a niche half way up the hill on Karekare beach but it served it’s purpose exceptionally well. We lit the bonfire in the entrance and settled comfortably against the walls about 1m from the bonfire and the entrance. The surf was getting louder, but it didn’t bother us as we knew we were high enough for even the biggest storm wave not to reach us. We had sausages cooked on sticks, corn cobs and garlic bread cooked in aluminium foil, finished with potatoes cooked in the ashes. After that we had no room for dessert anymore so we just had some tea and lied there listening to the surf, the fire and the rain, which started to pour down again. We burned all the firewood we brought and extinguished the fire by pouring the rest of the tea over it and covering it with sand. Walking back on the beach we got totally soaked in the rain but it didn’t matter anymore, our full stomachs put us in very good moods. After all, a bit of adventure, a bit of exercise, a bit of food and a bit of friendship made it into an unforgettable evening.

Still itches. Not sure whether it’s getting better or maybe I’m getting better at ignoring it?

It itches. Apparently that means it’s healing. It better heal fast otherwise I’m going to go crazy with the itch.