Rangitoto Island has made an appearance in several previous posts. It’s a volcanic island very close to Auckland and makes for great views from Mt Eden and Mission Bay beach. After two weeks of admiring it from afar, we took a ferry over to the island to explore .
Fullers offers round trip ferry service to the island and the earliest one is at 7:30a.m. They also offer a “Volcanic Explorer” tour that is a tram pulled by a tractor with a guide telling you about the island while you cruise around and hit some of the most popular spots.
Heads up, there isn’t a filtered water system on this island so no water fountains. Make sure you bring a big bottle. The only place to purchase water is from the Bach 38 Museum, up the hill to the left as you walk off the dock. Bach isn’t a reference to the composer, baches are bungalow vacation homes. It’s pronounced “batch” and is short for bachelor pad. There are several baches on Rangitoto Island, but no permanent residences.
The hiking here was really fun and not too strenuous. There are gravel roads or many other more scenic trails you can choose from.
The island is a public reserve and is managed by the Department of Conservation. It has more than 200 native species of plants and is virtually pest free due to a large scale pest-removal project. Our Volcanic Explorer guide told us one of the most entertaining stories of pest removal: an otter once escaped from the zoo and enjoyed a short vacation on Rangitoto before he was deemed a non-native-pest, captured, and returned.
The somewhat recent volcanic eruption sent lava all over the island, and the resulting black rock landscape is awesome. Also, they are sharp. Lesson learned when I tried to do my own version of parkour over a steam and went down hard into the water. I got a scraped up knee and and lots of laughs out of it, but I highly recommend bringing waterproof hiking shoes for this island. The wipeout happened on the Coastal Track and was the best track in our opinion.
Another one of our favorites was the lava caves. The lava caves are natural formations, and an interesting read on the Rangitoto Island wiki page.
We explored the island from about 8:00a.m to about 3:45pm. We had packed lunch and made a nice full day of it hitting as many highlights as we could. The 4:00pm ferry home was crowded and the dock wasn’t covered, so make sure you get there early and touch up your sunscreen. We did not, and took some interesting sunburns back with us as our only souvenir from the trip. We’ll live. A scraped knee and funny looking sunburn are small prices to pay for such a great experience.
