Te Kopuke / Mt St John

I think this is the last of the volcanoes I can walk to on my lunch hour, and I did that today. The first time I climbed that hill I thought that the Maori name was particularly funny, because I thought it looked like the word “puke”. But now I understand that it’s pronounced more like “poo-keh” which I guess is still a little bit funny.

The field guide told me that this volcano was a lot like the others that I’ve been to: it had been inhabited and covered with both defensive structures and food storage pits before the Europeans got here.

I can take this opportunity to offer a punctuation lesson… In the title, an American copy editor would add a couple of periods. However, here in New Zealand, all of those words like Mr Dr Mt St Jr and so on don’t take the period. I like the style, it’s a lot cleaner.