Rangitoto with Marco

Manawatu River

Harry Potter 7.2 

Dairy Farm

After shearing of the sheep

sheep dogs

Bridge I cross every day to the jungle to walk to my flat

Very small section of the stairs I walk up through the jungle to get to my flat

Spaceship water tower behind my flat

Owl on the way to campus

Bare Room!

Front door/washer

Kitchen

Living Room aka party central

Dining room

Rangitoto Volcano

Lava!

Shores of Rangitoto

Door to the bathroom (see sign below)

Ferry

So I didn’t plan out the morning super well so it ended up me needing to dry my hair in 5 minutes and sprint down to the harbor to catch the 10:30 am ferry to Rangitoto Volcano. Rangitoto is the youngest volcano in New Zealand at 600 years old. It has formed an island the marks the edge of the harbor. It’s a pretty small island, considering I walked most of it in just a few hours. Nobody lives on the island but it was used as a lookout and for some other military operations during the wars. Now it is just a popular spot for people to take a ferry and go hike the volcano to the summit where you can see the crater, the entire harbor, and Auckland. There is no food or accommodations so it is very important to catch the last ferry at 3:30pm. The ferry landed and I got off at 11 and began hiking. I took a path through a lovely grove and the whole time I was thinking “I love this place!” It really was so beautiful! The thick tropical forests were incredible! The path was small but the vegetation on every side was so lush and green like nothing in Utah. So after I came out of the grove I got back onto the main trail and I was hiking pretty fast but there was this dude behind me who was going even faster and I was a little weirded out so I started to walk faster but then he caught up with me and I guess he was lost so he was just trying to catch me to see if I had a map….I felt kind of bad but then. But turns out he was looking for the same trail as me and we found it and just started hiking together. His name was Marco and he was Portuguese but lives in Switzerland. He was used to engineer the type of equipment that I would use when I worked in the lab like bioreactors and tube shakers and stuff. We hiked to the lava tubes and you could even walk through one of them to the other side, it was about 100 meters and very dark. Then we hiked up to the summit and it was spectacular! The view from the top is pretty much indescribable. There is a giant crater covered is trees and bushes and then you can see the neighboring islands, the harbor, and the city. It was starting to rain in the city and so a giant rainbow came out over the ocean! But then those rain clouds that were over the city quickly made it over Rangitoto and we ran into an old war lookout building with some other people and waited for the storm to pass for just a couple minutes. If you thought Utah weather changes fast, try coastal weather in the winter! I can’t believe how fast I could be totally warm in a t-shirt to wishes I had my winter coat on. But the rain did pass for a bit and we continued to hike around the crater. When we got to the other side we had to make a choice, whether to go back the way we came and be back in 1 hour or take a trail that was marked to take 3.5 hours. It was 1:00 at this point and, as previously mentioned, we had to be back by 3:30 or be stuck on the island. So of course we decided to go for the 3.5 hour trail. We were both fast hikers and there was no way I was missing that ferry, so we hauled. But it was beautiful!  A large part of the trail was along the coast and we watched sail boats and we could easily see the neighboring island, which was very different because it was not formed by volcano and was just filled with green rolling pastures with cows. We would have gone over there is we had more time but we were in a bit of a rush. At one point we took a wrong turn that took us to the old WWII fort, it was a bit out of our way but still pretty cool. We were making very good time so I wasn’t too worried. But then we started onto the part of the trail that was through the island jungle. We couldn’t see the ocean, or the city, and didn’t see any other people for over an hour. It was crazy and felt like a movie. The trail was very skinny, it was easy to find but not too traveled I think because it was supposed to take 2 hours and most people were like us and didn’t have a lot of time to waste going on a really long and hidden trail.  But we did it and my legs were super tired but it was worth it. Marco told me about Switzerland and just throwing it  out there, in that country parents and required to pay for their kids college and help them live until they are 25. But it turned out to be all good and we made it back to the ferry pier with a half an hour to spare! We were both pretty tired but I thought it turned out to be quite the fun adventure. The whole time we were talking about how we would survive if we had to. I said I would run and catch a cow and we could stay in the army houses and then we decided we would just steal a sail boat but then we realized neither one of us knew how to sail. So we kept hiking fast. We got back to Auckland and went to a café for a bit and got some refreshing beverages and he told me about his plans to travel through Malaysia and Thailand. I think I would like to go to southeast Asia at some point.  Afterwards I grabbed a $5 6 inch at subway and went to the library to do some emailing. I got back at my hostel to pack and finally met the new British girl that had come. I discovered I cannot take British people seriously. She was talking to Anna and I and I just had to turn away because I was laughing so hard. I couldn’t help it! I don’t know why but her accent just made everything sound so funny! She was being super dramatic about getting a cell phone too but between the drama and the accent and I just about peed my pants laughing at her. It was awful, I felt bad and Anna thought I was crazy. I should probably never go to England. But after a long day of hiking I was exhausted so I packed everything to leave for Palmerston North and went to bed.