Past the point of no return

When we were floating in tubes down one of the underground rivers in Waitomo Caves, the guide issued a stern warning. "Float down the river," he advised us, "but just make sure not to go past the point of no return." The guide acknowledged that we probably wouldn't be able to identify this point of no return, but affirmed that we'd all be pretty screwed if we did indeed pass it. "The river only gets narrower and deeper, and moves just as fast," he stated. "Once you pass the point of no return, you might as well be lost forever."

We all managed to get out of the cave that day without passing the point of no return, though there wasn't really a whole lot we could have done to identify this point in a dark cave where everything that was visible looked pretty much the same. If anything, our experiences that day point to how amazingly lax outdoor adventure tours are here. The guide gave us the heads up, and we did our best to avoid getting lost underground. There weren't many other precautions in place, and the guide didn't get in our way at all in the name of safety.

People don't really sue here, and it is amazing in turn what the elimination of that fear can do for a tour company. We signed a waiver before going in the cave, and after that, it was more "don't say we didn't warn you" than anything else. The guide gave us facts and told funny stories, let us go tubing down a fast-moving river, and then warned us not to get lost in what amounts to an extensive underground maze.


On a much less hazardous note, there's a section of Auckland called Mission Bay that we've been driving to a lot recently. It's got a bunch of bars, restaurants, and cafes separated by a thin main strip of road from a wide park opening up onto a small beach that overlooks the Hauraki Gulf here. All in all the place has kind of a South Beach vibe, if South Beach had significantly less people and only one road. In a country with only 4.5 million people, areas like Mission Bay are more centrally positioned than they might be otherwise.

In any case, we've spent a lot of time in Mission Bay. It's about a 10 minute drive from our flats, and it's a got a great Belgian beer cafe which serves mussel pots that have been a notable highlight of my time in New Zealand. It's a beautiful drive to get there, as the road follows right along the coast once you get outside of Auckland's downtown area.

Perhaps, then, it's understandable that before last week, I had never ventured past Mission Bay. The coastal road leading there goes further, but we've never had a reason to be curious really. Mission Bay has beer cafes, and the beach, and a big grassy area in which to play football (our kind)... why would anyone ever want to take the chance that the next beach strip doesn't quite measure up? New frontiers can be scary.

Turned out this new frontier wasn't much of a frontier. Past Mission Bay, there's another 5 minutes or so of road, then another small beach suburb called St. Helier's Bay that pretty much looks exactly the same, then a cliff. Certainly no New World. Nonetheless, I had an opportunity to be an explorer last week when I was left with a car while its owners were in Australia. And it turns out that despite my having discovered the end of the coastal road in St. Helier's Bay, I was rewarded for taking Yogi Berra's advice: when you come to a fork in the road, take it!

I followed the road uphill on the left side (oddly natural now that I've driven it consistently) to find... a road that looped around and led back down. Kind of a bummer, I thought, until I glanced left and saw a path leading up to what looked like quite an impressive overlook. Then I glanced in front of me and noticed that the three parking spaces there must be for something. I could barely contain the former European inside me as I parked the car, walked up the path, and found a beautiful scenic lookout that I could now say I had discovered without actually discovering it. This wasn't exactly surprising, but I put two and two together and realized that this was the cliff I could see driving up toward St. Helier's Bay as the road ended.


Emboldened by my discovery, I drove across the Auckland harbor the next day and found another scenic lookout. A volcano that last erupted 20,000 years ago, Mount Victoria was "discovered" the old-fashioned way: it was once a Maori pâ (fortified settlement), before the land was taken by the British in the late 1800s and turned into a naval base. The base is decommissioned now, but all the equipment is still in place, including the lookout tower, which has some excellent graffiti. The coolest part by far, however, is definitely the disappearing gun.

The view across Auckland Harbor

Ballin!

The British in the late 19th century were concerned with Russian imperialist tendencies, and somehow, despite their vastly superior Navy, saw Russia as a threat to New Zealand. Eighty years before our own country started building massive weapons because of the Russians, Britain's own "Russian scare" prompted the building of the naval base to protect Auckland harbor, with the disappearing gun as a central feature. Essentially, it's a 19th century nuke. A really powerful cannon that "disappears" underground, had Auckland been threatened the gun would have "appeared" from beneath the ground the shoot unsuspecting Russian adversaries.

Along with the rest of the naval base, the disappearing gun, as I mentioned, is still there. You can even walk underground and see it up close for yourself:

Surprise!

You can't help feeling like the people who even discovered this country in the first place had traveled "past the point of no return." The fact that people are even here should teach us that anything is within reach. First, Polynesian explorers followed migratory birds and whales and seasonal wind patterns to these two large islands at the end of the earth. Europeans followed, motivated by a fictional belief in terra australis incognito, a vast unknown southern land mass which had stirred European imaginations and supposedly existed on the other side of the world. Looking, essentially, for a lost continent of Atlantis, European explorers followed what initially must have seemed like an endless sea.

While I'm no Tu Paia (the Maori leader of the first voyage to New Zealand), Abel Tasman (first European to find New Zealand), or James Cook (first Englishman), there's something about this place that just inspires exploration; whether it's a months long, scurvy-inducing voyage, or a mere trip centuries later in a private automobile past a small beach suburb. None of these early explorers could have even conceived of private automobiles, or modern suburbs. New Zealand, as far off the map as it may seem, is now home to over 4 million people: the world is very different today. And yet through all these changes and transformations, this county continues to represent and seems to encourage a spirit of traveling past any and all previously assumed points of no return.


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