Rangitoto Island

 Monday, February 17

The hand soap, body wash, and shampoo in the hotel washroom are all so perfumey that they could compete with Old Spice and win.  Thankfully, Anton packed a good old bar of Ivory with him.  Even the outlets here are gasping in horror at the situation!

Breakfast was pretty good.  The yogurt is coconut flavoured???  Looking for cream for the tea, we finally found a jug labelled "trim milk". Frankie was able to ask for gluten free bread and they toasted it separately for her in the kitchen.  We learned not to leave our table unattended for even a minute because when Frankie came back her tea was missing.  The girl scurried back with it all apologetic.

We asked if they had water bottles for us to take for the day.  We almost had a heart attack when they said we could buy them for $13 each!  But no worries, if you bring your own bottle, they will refill them for free.  This is the first trip we've ever travelled with our own small thermos bottles.  Yeah!

It was drizzling quite hard this morning, so we donned our rain jackets and rain shoes and off we went.  We had a 15 minute walk from our hotel to the harbour to catch our ferry.  How to find the harbour?  Just head downhill.  Auckland is very hilly!  Our travel agent had booked us on the 10:30 am ferry, but since we zonked out so early last night, we were up bright and early and were able to change our ferry ticket to 9:30 am.  The ferry ride ($50 each return) was a half hour long, we chatted with a nice British couple who are staying in NZ for 4 weeks, so jealous!  

We arrived at Rangitoto Island at 10 am.  When we docked, the captain told us that we were not able to dock at the regular place (Rangitoto Wharf) because of the weather.  He said we were docked at Islington Bay Wharf instead, and "If you don't know where that is, it doesn't matter.   Just make sure you come back to the same place when you want to leave."

There are over 50 volcanoes within 1000 square kms that make up the Auckland volcanic field.  

imagecredit: https://ha.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fayil:Auckland_Volcanic_Field.jpg

Rangitoto Island is #7 on the map (top right).  The orange on the map is the city of Auckland, so the whole city is one big volcanic field.

All the volcanoes are considered extinct except for Rangitoto Island, which is dormant.  It's the only volcano in the region which has erupted twice, 50 years apart.  The last time it erupted was 600 years ago. It is the largest and youngest of the volcanoes in the region.

Once on the island, use the washrooms at the wharf because that will be your only chance.  Oh, and they call the toilets "long-drop".  Yeah, hole in the ground.  Also, there are no shops, so bring your own food and water.

The difference between docking at the usual wharf and the one we had to land at is that we were now on the far east side of the island instead of the south.  So basically twice as far to get to the summit.

From Rangitoto Wharf it is a one hour direct hike up to the summit (259 m or 850 ft).  There are 300 steps to the top.  But the way we had to take was along Summit Road.  "Road" meant more of a track.  Lovely volcanic rock along the way.

By this time the rain had stopped and it was sunny and humid.  The views were gorgeous.  

We left the road and headed into dense vegetation.  The trail changed.

There were birds called Tui and some called North Island Saddleback.  The Tui sounded exactly like the sounds from the crosswalk lights in Auckland.  Who is imitating whom?

We started on the track that circles the rim of the volcano, but it was slippery from the earlier rain.  At the summit, we had some nice views of Auckland across the bay. 

We wanted to check out the lava caves, which added an hour to our hike. The caves were quite challenging.  Frankie regretted leaving her walking stick at the hotel, but nature provided a nice one for her.

We ran across 2 different school groups.  So surprising how friendly the kids were to us.  Frankie chatted with one of the teachers who told us that she had a group of 250 form 9 students, and they were staying on the island until Friday.  Oh brave soul!

After the caves we hoofed it back to the ferry in time for the 2:30 pm departure.  There are only a few return ferries to Auckland, and if you miss them you are out of luck. Then you would have to pay for an expensive water taxi ($1000) to come and get you. 

We hiked about 10 kms today.  Took the 2:30 ferry back to Auckland.  The city has an electric scooter share program.  Scan the app to unlike the scooter.

Back to the hotel for a shower, and then we found a great place for supper.  We sat for awhile and enjoyed the great music playlist from the 80's.  Hello, Bryan Adams!