Maungawhau / Mount Eden

This guide to Maungawhau / Mount Eden follows two very different claims on the mountain: the prisoners from the nearby Mount Eden gaol who quarried its slopes for road stone, marking each year served with a tattoo, and the far older story of the ancestor Huakaiwaka's fortified pa raised on these slopes around the year 1200. The crater at the summit carries its own name, the food bowl of a guardian spirit said to watch over secrets locked in the earth. The summit road is closed to cars, so you'll have walked up to reach this view yourself.