I took a trip over to Mount Wellington last weekend. Despite its name, Mount Wellington is actually in Auckland (though technically it is in the town of Mount Wellington). Mount Wellington is one of the dozens of volcanoes in the Auckland volcano field. It's one of the bigger ones, so I decided it would be worth checking out.
The most interesting part of Mount Wellington is the playing field that has been carved into the side of it. All volcanoes in New Zealand are considered spiritual places to the Māori people. In fact, all land in New Zealand technically belongs to the Māori people, but over the years, they have been kind enough to sell or donate land back to the government. Volcanoes are different though. Volcanoes are very special and important natural features for the Māori culture. And what did the government do to this very spiritual and important place? They carved out a soccer field and put in a parking lot and a road going up to it.
The second most interesting part of Mount Wellington is the scoria deposits. The entire cone is actually made out of scoria (that's why it is classified as a scoria cone volcano) and the government and industries have been mining this scoria for decades. On the side of one of the craters, there is an exposed section where scoria rocks just sort of ooze out. They ooze in a non-fluid, rocky way.
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