22|09|2018, Rangitoto Island

Hi guys,

today we took a day trip to Rangitoto Island as mentioned yesterday!

A volcanic island just off Auckland, with an inactive volcano.

We started this morning at 7:30am with the ferry from the pier in Auckland with the "Early-Bird-Ticket". Even during the crossing to the island, the view of the Auckland skyline was magnificent.

After a 15-minute ride, we arrived at the pier in Rangitoto.

Since we had planned the whole day and needed to burn off the calories from yesterday's burger, we decided to take the long hiking trail around the entire island, including hiking up to the volcano crater itself.

The trail was about 10km in total.

Since the entire island is uninhabited and completely untouched by nature, we found incredible tranquility in beautiful idyllic surroundings.

The island's nature was heavily characterized by lava rock! As this is known to be extremely nutrient-rich, the island's fauna was truly breathtaking.

Although the track up the volcano was quite strenuous, every step was worth it for the incredible view! A view over Auckland, the island, and the surrounding area.

At the crater, we met an 18-year-old German named Caro.

Caro is also doing "Work & Travel" here in New Zealand and accompanied us back to the pier.

On this way, we admired beautiful lava caves again. One of these caves was even accessible, so we immediately grabbed our flashlights and explored the cave! A really cool experience.

After about 7 hours of hiking, mainly uphill, we arrived back at the pier!

Our ferry left at 2:30pm, the last one would have left at 4:00pm.

If we hadn't caught that one, we would have had to spend the night on the island, so we made sure to be back at the pier by then!

After Caro gave us some tips for our further journey, we said goodbye to each other after a joint meal at the Mexican restaurant.

The openness of the people here in New Zealand is really cool. You quickly get to know a lot of people and have deeper conversations with strangers than we know from our reserved Germany.

Now, 30,000 steps later, we are back in the hostel bed.

We will definitely sleep well tonight!

Tomorrow will most likely be a more relaxed day for us, as we have to take care of some paperwork!

Greetings from Auckland, New Zealand!😊🇳🇿

Yours, Tim!