It's been a while...

I have to apologize in advance for two things:
1) All this stuff happened over the past two weeks, sorry about the lateness!
2) The bottom half of this post gets a little text-heavy, since most of the pictures documenting our travels were on Lina's camera and she lost it recently. Bear with me and I'll try and steal Tori's pictures to post up later!


So getting into the past two weeks, nothing tooo exciting happened, but I did get a pair of hiking boots and I've been having so much fun breaking them in! 

Modeling my super stylish hiking boots

Last-last Saturday my friend Lina and I walked out to Mission Bay, which is a little over 4 miles away. Soooo gorgeous! We hung out there for a little while at the beach to reward ourselves :)

Me and Lina at Mission Bay

On the way back we noticed a rather enticing green hill, so we decided to find some way to get to the top. After a little searching we finally found a small pathway and made our way up; the view was amazing! Such a rewarding trip, definitely a successful maiden voyage for the new hiking boots.

View from the top of the hill!

Early last week Lina and I took another trip to a beach just past Mission Bay called Kohimarama Beach, about 5 miles away from the UniLodge. We had another very relaxing day and got some good walking in, but unfortunately didn't gauge our time very well and ended up missing class : / definitely something to keep in mind next time...

View of Auckland from across the harbor

Last Thursday I didn't have any class, so we went on yet another hiking expedition! We set our sights on Devonport, a small town usually accessible by ferry since the bay curves around quite a bit. The walk took a while, but was so fun and so worth it!

A little visual of the trip - you can also see Kohimarama off to the right

 As we got into the town we wandered through a bunch of cute little shops, and I bought an awesome-looking volume of short stories from a secondhand bookstore. We made our way around North Head, one of the hills in Devonport, and finally relaxed on a beach out there. The tide was so low that you could walk out in the water for a good 5-10 minutes and the water would only come up to about mid-shin!

A little later our friend Tori caught the ferry over to meet us for a little sunset-watching at the top of Mount Victoria (another hill in town). We sat up there with a few bottles of wine and enjoyed the amazing view :)

On Friday we were lucky enough to be brought out to Goat Island by one of my friends' classmates, Jason. The drive was about an hour out of Auckland, and the marine reserve had amazing snorkeling! Jason supplied us with wetsuits and snorkel gear, so we were fully outfitted and good to go! 

The drive up to Goat Island 

Here's a close-up of the island - you drive out to the reserve and then snorkel around it.
Omaha is also there in the bottom right corner

After a few hours there we went to Matakana and had what was quite possibly the best ice cream I've ever tasted. Frozen yogurt blended with fresh blueberries, so delicious! Then we headed out to Omaha Beach, which had fantastic warm water and fun waves. We laid out, waded in the water, and played a little catch with a rugby ball (so New Zealand!). Such a great end to the week!


I had my final yesterday, so now I'm officially on mid-semester break!! Lina and I will be leaving for the South Island tomorrow, and meeting up with our friends Lydia and Sarah. We'll be exploring Queenstown a little bit, then hiking the Routeburn, Greenstone and Caples tracks in the Fjordland!! I'm so excited, I can't believe we're flying out tomorrow! I'll make sure to take lot of pictures :)

Thanks for bearing with me through this long post! Cheers :)