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Rangitoto - hiking on a volcanic island
We used our first day in Auckland to get to know the city and to get organized, this allowed us to do a full day excursion to Rangitoto on the second day.
Rangitoto is the youngest volcanic island near Auckland, it erupted about 600 years ago, although no one knows for how long the process lasted.
Today Rangitoto is a nature park which offers many opportunities for hiking, camping and swimming (in summer at least).
Our motivation was to find a couple of special challenge Caches, so we didn't follow the rest of the visitors who headed straight to the summit, but rather chose a smaller track which followed the coastline. This was an excellent decision, as it brought us accros a very wide range of terrain. From stretches switch volcanic rock, where we had to watch out where we placed our feet, to lush forrests with moss covered stones.
Looking for the Caches went very smoothly. Only the first one eluded us, the rest was discovered quickly.
Since the island is quite young the number of animals is still quite small. We spotted a number of beautiful birds and a couple of cute brown quails.
After a short lunch break we headed up to the summit from where we had spectacular views. Unfortunately, the last ferry departed at 3:30pm, so we had to head straight back down and skip a fair number of Caches.
All in all we can highly recommend visiting Rangitoto.Labels: geocaching, hiking, new zealand, pictures, traveling
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