Lets put a few things into perspective before chatting about Auckland, shall we? We spent two weeks in Australia where we were wearing shorts the entire time. So much so that one pair ripped wide open in the Outback while gathering firewood! It was fabulous weather.
If Australia is The Rolling Stones then Auckland is the singer you see on American Idol who sound like a cat breathing its last breath in the form of a really bad Celine Dion song.
The morning we awoke to a day in Auckland turned out to be the day they were calling for rain. Not just any rain as we found out later in the day, but there were flood warnings across the country.
Some lessons learned from this:
– One should really look into the local weather forecast before heading on a hike up a volcano.
We hopped on the ferry which would bring us to Rangitoto Island…home to an active volcano! Or maybe not. I think we mixed up Rangitoto and Rotorura. Either way we rode the ferry over to Rangitoto and they announced that due to heavy winds they would land at another port which adds forty five minutes to our hike up the volcano. Well, how long is the hike anyhow?
It took us awhile to get a straight answer from the crew…even to the point where we hadn’t hopped off the ferry and it was pulling away while we were talking with the crew! In the end, they figured the walk up would take 1 hour 45 minutes up one way. But the ferry was returning in in two and a half hours around twelve thirty. The next would come around three thirty. It was already pissing rain on us at the dock…there was no way we were going to spend all day on this shower of an island!
We hightail it down the trail…I believe Vero may have shoved an old lady off the path at one point. Nothing was stopping us!
We ended up getting to the summit in fifty minutes. We now realize that the time estimates must be for those who are ninety years old (Nanny Sybil excluded of course!). We enjoyed taking a break from the gruelling hike up the hill and admired the rain cloud directly in front of us, instead of a lovely view. All kidding aside it was a decent view but could have been better.
On the way down we figured we had time to check out the Lava Caves and we are glad we did! They were full on caves that we can walk through. I was waiting to encounter some bats but they never appeared. Very cool!
The terrain is interesting considering it has volcanic rock strewn about the land. Luckily most of the trail was gravel.
We arrived back to the dock where we chatted with some French folks who gave us some tips for the next part of our travels.
Considering we were soaked and miserable we decided to call it a day around two PM and do what two sane people in floodwaters should do…go to the cinema!
We watched the new Ron Howard film Rush which was great. Highly recommend it.
It took awhile for us to figure out where we wanted to eat that night and we ended up having a lovely Thai meal down the street from the hotel. There were gale force winds out and we watched the news to see if we would have problems the next morning when we were going to hit the road.
Auckland unfortunately fell victim to the bad weather but I also have to say that one day was plenty.
