Came, Saw, Went Up Some Hills And Stuff

So there were two things left in Auckland for me to do which I'd had ample opportunity to do in the last year but hadn't because of weather or an inability to get out of bed before midday. One was Rangitoto Island which you can see from a lot of Auckland and the other was the Sky Tower, an integeral part of my navigational system. Lost? Head towards the tower.

9th March
Aaaanyways, the first one I made it to was Rangitoto ("Bloody Skies" in Maori), a now dormant volcano which was formed about 700 years ago. It must have looked fucking amazing to the Maoris living on Motutapu Island, next to it. Amazing and completely terrifying, it was formed by a series of explosions over 200 years as magma forced its way through the sea bed and met the cold water, making it the youngest of Auckland's ridiculous amounts of volcanos. For now anyway, nothing to say some part of Auckland isn't going to explode again at some point in the future...

Rangitoto Island

So me and Ana dragged ourselves out of bed and headed to the ferry terminal to catch the 9:15am boat to the volcano carrying sandwiches and bottles of water, everything we'd need providing we didn't miss the ferry home and get stranded on the island overnight. Nothing to worry about then. Nothing at all.
We jumped off the ferry and began the tramp to the summit. Summit. As in upwards. A hot, sweaty walk up a hill. How very romantic.

At The Bottom...

Let's Doooo It!

Send The Little One In First

Its a nice enough walk but nothing much to tell apart from the lava caves, formed by lava (go figure) which then cools, solidifies on the outside then the centre drains out. I recommend you bring a torch or someone smaller than you to send in first, just in case. There's not much to worry about apart from spiders though which is scary enough for me, I fucking hate the eight legged demons so that made it Ana's job to scout while I gave her encouraging words such as, "You're doing great, baby!" and, "Don't fall over or anything, I ain't carrying you back!"
Never let it be said that I don't know how to treat a girl.
There's only one thing scarier than a cave that could contain spiders and that's a volcano that DOES contain a large quantity of kids on a school trip. Once we were at the top we hung back a bit and ate some food while the hoards of children did what children do best and irritated the hell outta me.
The view was worth the wait though, once they'd cleared off we chilled out and enjoyed the fact that we weren't in the city.

From The Top

We made it back down with heaps of time to spare then it was back to the mainland to replace all those lost calories with beer and to tick Rangitoto off my NZ list.

9th April
Its hard to imagine the Auckland skyline without the Sky Tower. I have so many photos of it, I've been fascinated by it since I moved here, I've done the Sky Walk and the Sky Jump but I hadn't been up it just to hang out.

Up. Again. But at least this time there was a lift to transport you upwards to 192 metres so you could see exactly what Auckland would look like without the Tower assuming you were really really tall or could fly.

Ana, Me And Rangitoto

The whole entire tower itself is, like, 328 metres tall or something which makes it the tallest structure in NZ. Pretty easy to be considered tall in NZ though, its not a country of skyscrapers or anything. If I'd been good and ate my greens as a kid I'd prolly be a comparatively tall structure an all and in all honesty I reckon the big pointy spike thing on top is a bit of a cheat. It's like, we've built this tower an its really fucking tall but how do we make it even taller when all we have is all this metal stuff that resembles a spike?
Anyway. Ticked off the list. That's that.

New Zealand? Been there, done that.

written by

Koala Bear on April 9, 2010 from Auckland, New Zealand

from the travel blog: Tiny Little NZ Road Trip

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