Day 15- Hiking up Rangitoto!

Today was the craziest day of my life as a Kiwi so far. We all got up and met for breakfast early and took peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and fruit from the dining hall. Njeri, Flora, Anna, Anisha, Olly, Kenny, Jo, Laura and I all took a long walk down Queen Street to the ferry terminal. We got there right at 10:30 and heard that the ferry left without us! We were super bummed but then we found out that they held the ferry for us, so we were able to get on the boat!! So we jumped on board, headed for Rangitoto, which is a dormant volcano-island with hiking trails all the way up to the top. The walk was hard but great, not as steep as I would have thought until the very end, and we walked on cooled-lava gravelly rocks and some harder packed lava rock. We got to see beautiful sea views and just had a wonderful experience out of the city.

Our first detour was to some lava caves, which are basically underground cave systems that you can crawl though- but you have to squeeze! Two of the ones we went into today came out in a different part of the mountain. I must say I’ve never done anything like that before, where you essentially climb down into a hole in the ground where there’s spiders and groundwater drips on your head, only to follow the cave as far in as you can.

After that, we hiked all the way to the top, which would have only been an hour and a half long hike if we went there directly. From the top, you can see all 360 degrees of the island, surrounding water, other islands, Auckland City, etc. It was SO cool! Next to the summit was a giant crater where the actual volcano collapsed, but it is now covered in trees so you can’t really see a lot of the actual volcano. If there was more time I would have loved to hike into the crater.

So from the summit (where we had a picnic lunch) we took our sweet time walking back to the ferry, hoping to catch the earlier ferry home. It turns out, we made it to a dock (probably another hour’s hike) only to find out that we were at the wrong dock and had to hike back across the island (thankfully not back up the mountain…) for another hour and a half to get to the right ferry terminal. This was stressful because we were already exhausted and found out that we had to get to the correct ferry terminal by 5 pm, but it was 3:33 pm when we left. It was also really stressful because the 5 pm ferry out of Rangitoto was the last one of the day. If we missed it we would have to just hang out on the island until the morning ferries came. We hiked pretty quickly over tons of hills and ended up making the last ferry.

Then, on the way back we stopped at Countdown, the local grocery store, and ended up walking quickly all the way back up Queen Street, then Symonds Street with bags of groceries. We had to beat the clock yet again today because they stop serving dinner at 7 pm, and after a crazy day like we had that would have been the last thing I would have wanted to do! We were all starving- I’ve never heard all of my friends be as quiet as they were when they got their plates! Roast chicken and gravy and potatoes have never tasted so good! On the plus side, we arrived at dinner rather late and got the chef to give us each two helpings of chicken.
Now, we’re about to watch the film Book of Eli which is really really good, about having faith after the end of the world. It’s definitely worth seeing!