We kicked off our last day with a walk on the beach just across the street from our apartment. It was a beautiful morning, and we met a old local and his dog. He was super friendly; all the people here are. If only it was warm, we could have taken a dip. (We’ll just have to save that for tomorrow.)
We’ve really enjoyed breakfast here, so we wanted one last one. We went just up the road to Hiniscus Cafe and ordered our two favorite dishes of the trip: pancakes and eggs bene. Oh, and flat white #15, we think, which is the last one. It’s very sad. The coffee was good, but the food didn’t live up to all the other places we’d been. Our recommendation- skip this one.
Since it’s our last day and all, we figured it was the perfect day to climb a volcano! We headed back down to the Queen’s Wharf to catch the ferry over to Rangitoto. If I’m being honest, this is am activity we didn’t research enough. We figured ferries would leave pretty regularly, maybe every 15-20 minutes.. not the case. We grabbed tickets around 11:30, and the next ferry didn’t leave until 12:15. Nbd, we entertained ourselves by walking around a bit and playing several games of What Am I Thinking? Quality. Anyway, the real kicker- the only way to get out to Rangitoto is the ferry, meaning that’s the only way to get back, too. The last ferry back leaves the island at 3:30. It’s a 30 minutes ferry ride and it’s about an hour hike up to the summit.. the car needed to be returned before 4:30. Yikes! So, realistically, we needed to be back on the 2:30 ferry to comfortably return the car.
That was definitely the long version. Short version: it was a challenging, fast-paced hike practically straight up to the summit of the volcano. We stopped very little on the way up for scenic viewing. It was grueling. About 15 minutes from the top, I was about over it. Then, about 8 minutes later, we hit the crater- the actual opening of the volcano.
This volcano last erupted 600 years ago, so it’s had a while to grow vegetation, but still a massive hole right there! (Right there.) There’s still a lot of lava rock, but a lot of green has come through, too. After stopping to admire the crater, the only thing between us and the summit was 60+ steps, and we weren’t stopping with 4 minutes to go! Good thing, too. The view from the summit made it totally worth the hike. Breathtaking, in all directions.
We did manage to catch the 2:30 ferry and drop the car off on time. Awesome, right!? We thought so, too. For our last event, we grabbed dinner at the first place we ate here - The Post Office. It was a satisfying way to wrap up the trip. It very much felt like we went full circle. I suppose we kind of did, at least around the North Island.
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