After we finished up at Kangaroo Island, it was time to make our way down to New Zealand. We decided to start our adventure in Auckland. Our main task? Hike a volcano! How cool is that? Rangitoto is a volcanic island off the coast of Auckland. To get there, we first had to clean our shoes (they had giant shoe-cleaning brushes) and board the ferry. The island has no pests or foreign animals/plants so they work hard to keep it that way with these shoe cleaning stations. They even had us double check our packs for animals! Weird!
After a gorgeous, 30-ish minute ferry ride, we arrived. I gotta say, the island is gorgeous! We decided to do the summit trail and just make our way to the top. I thought it was funny how it was indicated as a paved, easy path and it certainly was not! It was anything crazy, but it was definitely steep and rocky in some places. Maybe Americans are wimps when it comes to hikes so I've come to expect ultra-easy paths if they are marked easy. Who knows.
Regardless the views from the top were breathtaking!
Along the way, we could see some piles of volcanic ash which was really, really cool.
I've never had the chance to actually hike on a volcano, so I was really excited about this! You can kind of see the dip of the center of the volcano from the top, but it doesn't look like what you'd see in a movie. It just looked like the trees were lower than where we were on the rim - I couldn't get a good picture of it to give you some perspective, but trust me it was cool.
Anyway, if you have a free day (we took something like 4 or 5 hours to ride over, hike and ride back) I highly recommend this hike! I loved spending time outside and in nature. It was a ton of fun.
If you'd like help planning your next adventurous hike, visit my website at MilesIntoMemoriesTravel.com.
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