Travel
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Maungakiekie, One Tree Hill
It’s easy to understand how a bustling settlement could have existed on Maungakiekie. Buildings, food stores and plantations would once have lined the artificially terraced slopes and the extensive views from its summit would have made it easily defendable as… Continue reading
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Maungawhau, Mount Eden
Maungawhau, or Mount Eden, is the highest point on the Auckland isthmus, one of the 14 Tūpuna Maunga o Tāmaki Makaurau , the ancestral mountains of Auckland. The volcanic cones upon which Auckland is built are of profound importance to… Continue reading
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A Tale of Two Flights
Everyone accepts that air travel is unnatural. No living creature, human or otherwise, has evolved to traverse this world with the speed we can by plane. Before this week the longest flights I had been on were to North America;… Continue reading
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Interlaken
By the close of the 19th century, the growing tendrils of industrial travel had transformed Europe’s provincial backwaters into profitable centres of tourism. The Alps, once spurned as a region of backwardness and superstition, now attracted thousands seeking their own… Continue reading
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Zermatt
As he gazed across that milky vista of saw-toothed peaks and formidable massifs, Edward Whymper must have felt unstoppable. It had been four years since he first laid eyes on that spectacular mountain, and now, perched upon its precarious summit,… Continue reading
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Geneva
For a city of such global renown, Geneva can appear inconsequential. It lacks the self-assurance of a capital, the vibrancy of a metropolis, and, as a French-speaking global centre on the periphery of a majority German-speaking nation, a certain stability… Continue reading
Dead Academic 