Waiheke and Rangitoto Island

Sunday, 22.09.2019

On Sunday, I was supposed to go to Rangitoto Island with Chiara and Torben, with whom I went to Muriwai Beach on Saturday. Rangitoto Island is a volcanic island that is about half an hour away from Auckland by ferry. Since the island is not visited frequently during the day and Sunday was the perfect weather for hiking, the ferry was unfortunately fully booked. We then bought tickets for the next day directly at the pier. Darien, a Canadian from the hostel, also joined us. We spontaneously took another ferry to Waiheke Island, which took about 40 minutes. I wanted to go there anyway. The island is relatively large, but you can easily get around by bus. We went directly to Onetangi Beach. Actually, we only wanted to stay there for a short time and then go to Rocky Beach, but the beach was so beautiful that we ended up staying for 4 hours. In summer, the beach is probably always crowded, as it has beautiful white sandy beach and clear water, but now we were almost alone. So, we could relax really nicely. Waiheke also has a lot of vineyards, so a wine tasting was a must. However, we chose Tantalus Estate, which is rather a more upscale address, and we were a bit out of place (hiking shoes plus rain jacket and some bird droppings on the bag were not exactly the dress code). Anyway, we did it anyway and the wine was really good. The sommelier told us everything possible about the respective wines. However, they could have sold us anything, as we had no idea what they were telling us. The main thing was that the wine was delicious. More than a wine tasting was not possible for us, so we went to Oneroa Beach. The highlight there was simply that dolphins were swimming in the bay all the time. I was a little jealous of the kayakers who went very close to them. So, it was worth missing the ferry to Rangitoto Island.

Monday, 23.09.2019

The four of us plus Philipp, also from the hostel, then went to Rangitoto on Monday. On this island, you can hike and do nothing else. You could either go around the island and then hike up to the crater, but that would have taken a few hours, or hike directly up to the crater for 1 hour. Since we walked the wrong way for an hour, we decided on the latter. The ascent is not so exhausting if you are fit, but I really noticed that I haven't done any sports for weeks. I thought I would never make it to the top. We were also really lucky with the weather that day, so from the crater, we had a great view of the harbor of Auckland. On the way back, we also passed a few caves that you could walk through or sometimes had to crawl through. I decided not to crawl. But it was really fun overall.

Wednesday, 25.09.2019

On Wednesday, I took a bus from Auckland to Wellington for 11 hours. That gave me a little taste of the landscape. In Wellington, I will probably stay until Sunday and then we'll see, maybe I'll do some WWOOFing, which means working for food and accommodation. I need to save money after the week in Auckland.