Rangitoto Island

Not quite as long ago, Shannon and I took a ferry over to Rangitoto Island. It's an extinct volcano in the middle of the harbor, about 25 minutes by ferry. It was last active ~600 years ago. It's set up for day trips at this stage, but back in the day, there were batches over there and a bit of a settlement. Now it's just a nice place to hike around for the day.

You can walk around about half the island easily before going up to the peak. It's all volcanic rock along the way, and I think the only thing that I've ever been to that resembles the big island of Hawaii.

We happened to steal a trip over on what turned out to be the best day of winter, as far as I'm concerned. Sunburns were the big worry of the day.

Moisture burning off in the morning sun. It's really extinct.

Something that is really cool about this island is the network of old lava caves that you can walk through. Some are bigger than others, some go nowhere, some go through. It's a mixed bag. I suppose you could probably play around in there for quite a while. We walked through one and I stuck my head into another. We saw some Canadians that took a rope and went deep into one of them. Pretty cool stuff to explore.