purplecat: An open book with a quill pen and a lamp. (General:Academia)
[personal profile] purplecat
If you had noticed I was posting at odd times last week it was because I was in Auckland, New Zealand at the AAMAS 2024 conference. The conference started on Monday but I arrived in the early hours of Saturday morning and then had to contrive to stay awake until at least early evening. Thankfully the hotel let me into my room early so I was able to wash, change my clothes, faff around on email, spin pokestops and post Granny's Diary but by the afternoon I felt a change of scene would be needed. I googled things to do in Auckland and realised I could see an extinct volcano from my hotel room window. So I climbed it.


A pronounced grass covered dip in a hill top.  Beyond the Auckland skyline is visible, including a slender circular tower that tapers to a point.


It wasn't, honestly, that hard to get up being in the middle of a park. Information boards informed me that it was surrounded by earthworks from early Maori settlements though, to be honest, I found these hard to pick out. I think their effect was obscured by the raised boardwalks that surrounded the volcanic crater, set above the earthworks to prevent people walking on them. The crater, itself, was off limits. According to the information boards it was sacred to Mataaho, the god of things hidden in the ground and was known as Te Ipu Kai a Mataaho (the Food Bowl of Mataaho).

Those with a good knowledge of geek geography can probably guess where I went the next day, but there are a lot of photos that need sorting...

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