Now this is one cool place! A proper volcanic island, almost perfectly circular, the result of a farly recent volcanic explostion, which took place only 600 years ago. This might not sound like a lot, but the whole island is still a pile of volcanic rubble, with all the rocks not having had the chance to properly turn into soil yet.
Rangitoto, meaning "blood red sky" apparently, is a short ferry ride from the Auckland shore and is another one of the Hauraki Gulf islands. I actually got up in time and managed to make it to the ferry.
On approaching the island one just feels pretty awed by the size of the volcano and the state of the vegetation. It's a conserved natural park, so unlike waiheke island, there are no houses here and altough it's still pretty touristy, it still feels like being out in a jungle at times. Specially a couple of times, when I lost my way in a couple of trails and found meself literally in the middle of the pretty thick forest...
The view from the summit is as awesome as can be expected from a height of 260m, and you can literally walk around the rim of the volcano's crater, which is still relatively intact, giving one an idea of the size of the mofo!!
There's some pretty cool lava caves as well, basically weathered channels that you can trek through, and which do add to the adventure feeling of the whole place, that and the scattered ruins of the old settlements, which randomly one comes accross
All in all, a great day, glad i slept in yesterday cos the weather was so much better today and even managed to meet some spanish people, so I guess laziness does pay!
No comments:
Post a Comment