day 6 - Rangitoto Island

Today we had an adventure to Rangitoto Island. It is about a 25 minute ferry ride from Auckland Harbour. It was a pretty overcast day, but it turned out to be a perfect day for a nice hike and walk around the island.

Rangitoto Island is said to have formed in a single week. The first half is reported to have taken 8 hours and the second half was finished before the week was over. It is a "dormant" volcano, and is part of the same volcano field that Auckland City is built on. Rangitoto is the youngest volcano as it erupted a short 600 years ago and is about 259 meters high.

We left on the ferry around 9:15am and it took about an hour and 20 minutes to get to the top of the volcano. It was a beautiful walk with lots of lava fields along the way.

We also crawled around in some lava caves, which was nice! We didn't bring our torch, but luckily we met a nice english couple along the way who lent us theirs to head into one of the caves for a wee bit. It is not a real torch, no worries, just a flashlight to us American folk.

Then we headed on to explore more of the island, such as the Kidney Fern Grove, Kowhai Grove and the Bachs along the coast. The Bachs are cottages that have been on the island for a hundred years or so and are kept up by the Rangitoto Island Conservation Group.

It was nice to get out of the city and walk around.

We have arrived back at the hostel to do some laundry and get ready to head north of Auckland for a few days!