Rangitoto Island

Rangitoto Island is the youngest island in the Hauraki Gulf and was formed by a volcanic eruption about 600 years ago. Today, there are no inhabitants on the island, but it is accessible by ferry and is a common day hike. A group of us (Kelly, Cate, Ed, Lynn, Caitlin and I) decided to take a break from studying and went to visit the island on Thursday. There are several trails on the island and you can hike up to the summit. The terrain on the island was quite rocky, because the ground is still very much made of all the remains of the lava and stuff from when the volcano erupted. Relatively speaking, the island is very new.
We began our hike up to the summit, which took about an hour, including a few picture stops. Some parts were a little steep, especially closer to the summit, but for the most part it was a pretty steady and gradual uphill climb.
The views from the top were definitely worth it! We had 360 degree views of the harbor and back to Auckland. We stayed up at the top just hanging out for a while enjoying the beautiful weather and views. We had packed lunches and ate these up top.
Here's a group shot we took using a self timer. We're kind of blocking the views, but here's Cate, Kelly, Ed, Lynn, myself and Caitlin at the summit:
More views:
You could also walk around the rim of the crater, which only took about 10-15 minutes. I was surprised how much growth and vegetation there was inside of the crater. The shape of it looked as I expected, but I thought that it would be all rocky inside, not full of trees!On our walk back down the volcano, we took a side trail to go visit the lava caves. There are several different caves that are formed out of lava tubes. Some of them are very small, but others were large enough to walk through. It was recommended that you have a flashlight, but we didn't have one with us. They were very dark, but we braved them anyway, going very slow and taking flash photos every so often to get an idea for what lay ahead. It's hard to get a feel for what it was like inside from these pictures, but you can kind of tell that it was a pretty small space. On either end, you still had the light from the entrance or exit, but in the middle it got so dark that you really couldn't even see the person in front of you!

Here we are at the entrance to the lava cave:

It was rather low at some points:

Here are Caitlin, Ed and Kelly emerging at the end:

We got down to the bottom of the hill and still had over an hour before the ferry would be back to pick us up, so we decided to walk along the coast for a little while. It wasn't very "beachy" because the beaches were made of volcanic rock. There were several historic beach houses called "baches" that were built during the 1920's and 1930's. The building of these baches was banned in 1937 and most have since been removed because Rangitoto is now considered a scenic reserve. Here's one of them that was preserved:

It was a great day for a hike and wonderful just to get out and do something. It's disappointing that the end of our time here has to be spent studying and taking finals, but we are trying to still experience things and hiking Rangitoto definitely made for an enjoyable day.