VOLCANO!!!

I know I mentioned before that my flat sits on the side of an extinct volcano and that I have to walk over it every day to get to classes, but to be honest, unless I read that it was once an active volcano, I never would have know. 

Mount Eden, on the other hand, is a real volcano-shaped, volcano-looking mountain. For the past couple of weeks, I have been attending the weekly, "Movies in the Park" series. Once a week, there is a free movie shown in the Mount Eden domain which is about 10 minutes from my flat. A few hundred people show up and watch some New Zealand themed film on a giant inflatable screen. The movie is shown at the base of a little extinct volcano and every week I wonder what the view is like from the top.

Last weekend, I finally took a couple of hours and hiked up to the summit. It was pretty impressive. From a viewpoint three quarters of the way up, you can see all of Auckland and then some. I finally understand how sprawling the city is and how close it is to water. 

At the top, I was in for a pleasant surprise. As I approached to top of the mountain, the terrain started to level out and I noticed the edge of what looked to be some sort of indentation. The closer I got to the edge, the larger the indentation became. Finally, I was standing right at the edge looking down into a huge, deep volcanic crater. There were tons of tourists around, looking at the gaping dent with somewhat passive expressions, but I guess these people had seen real volcanos, or real extinct volcanos before. I hadn't, so I was amazed. I wanted badly to run down into the middle, but it probably would have been pretty tough to get out and signs were posted saying that the area was sacred and people weren't supposed to go into the crater. 

It was pretty cool.