A long time coming...and a fair way up.

It's been nearly 9 years since we moved up to Auckland, and now we finally ticked off one activity that has been near the top of our list. Climb to the top of Rangitoto. Only a 30 minute ferry ride, there's no good excuse for why we hadn't got around to it earlier, but some welcoming cloud cover spurred us on this morning (on a sunny day, you literally cook on the lava fields).

The climb to the summit, at 260m and nearly an hour, isn't too tough, though on a warm and humid Auckland day, it didn't take long to get a sweat up. The 360 degree views from the top are pretty spectacular. Though this is depreciated somewhat by finding that all the lazy tourists who got the ride up have beaten you to it. So when they went left, we went right - circling the crater and then having a look in some lava caves. From there we walked down to Islington Bay, which separates Rangitoto and Motutapu Island. In fact, the two islands and so close that a 5 metre causeway bridge joins them. It was a great spot to have some lunch and cool off with a swim.

We then had a couple of hours left to make it back in time for the last ferry. The "Coastal Track" turned out not to be coastal at all, being more a scramble over lava fields and though Pohutukawa Forest. Of course, this was when the sun decided to come out and it was a hard trek back. Surprisingly, there isn't as much bird life as you expect. You only hear a few songs from time to time, though the fantails are pretty friendly. The lava does dominate, and though it is no Fernandina in the Galapagos, does make for a stunning contrast with the rest of the city lying just across the water.