About Ian

Auckland, New Zealand
A Dartmouth College junior who studied Linguistics and Anthropology in New Zealand from January to March 2013. I like words and music and programming, but not all at once. I'm pretty awkward, and for a good chunk of 2013 I was awkward in Auckland. Get it?

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Rangitoto Trip

Sorry about the delay, people! It turns out doing Anthropology research and then writing a paper on it takes a little more time than I originally thought. But I'm back on track (for now) and ready to dish about my trip to Rangitoto Island that happened last Saturday! Since my last post was mostly text, I'm going to let the pictures do the talking this time.

Around 6:30 (ugh) on Saturday, we (Melinda, Grace, Justine, Mitchell, and I) got up and headed north to catch the 7:30 ferry across the bay to Rangitoto. This volcanic island has a pretty interesting story: it erupted out of the sea about 700 years ago in a spectacular pyrotechnic birth that may have inspired its Māori name ("bloody sky"), though the name is also tied to a bloody battle that happened around the same time. Even today, there are footprints left over from Māori people who explored the island soon after the dust settled (perhaps even before the lava fully cooled). Despite its violent origins, Rangitoto has an incredible array of trees, flowers, and birds.
In the 1920s and 1930s (up until the current construction prohibition established in 1937), Pākehā settlers built a number of baches (pronounced "batches") as vacation house. There were also military fortifications built during World War II in preparation for an invasion that never came. After this, the bach owners had a quaint little community that lasted until the late '70s and early '80s, when the residents moved back to the mainland.

Back to the present! We decided on a pretty long route, since we wanted to stay for most of the day: start at Rangitoto Wharf, meander through the kōwhai grove, explore all the empty baches, then head west on Coastal Road toward the Lighthouse, turn right to head up the summit, hit the lava caves on the way down, and finally loop back to take Islington Bay Road back to the Wharf.

Approaching Rangitoto Island!



It's a map! And no, Dora, it's not a talking map.
The kōwhai grove was quite lovely. Even though the kōwhai trees weren't in bloom and there were a lot of spiderwebs (sorry, spiders-whose-webs-we-destroyed), the other plants were cool.

Walking through the grove.
I think that was some kind of moss covering this tree. 
This grass had knots tied into it for some reason.
It's Christmas again! I will never get tired of looking at these Pōhutukawa trees. 
A closeup of the Pōhutukawa flower.
We then proceeded to check out the old baches, which were cute but eerie in their emptiness. It made us feel like we were in a disaster movie, where the area had just been evacuated and the houses left behind.

Pink and portentous.
It looks like someone could just come outside and sit on the porch. 
"Rangitoto is beachcombers paradise"
A barrel behind one of the baches, used to catch rain for drinking water.

Shameless creeping on one of the houses. It's all so neat inside! 
Yes, that is a baby-doll-teakettle-thing on the fireplace.
Otherwise, the room looks quite cozy.
They had weird names.
After a short stop for breakfast along the water, we set off on our circuitous path to the summit. Along the way, we passed by some stunning lava fields and trekked through the woodlands that looked increasingly like rainforest.

Where the lava met the sea. It looked like another planet.

Here's what most of the rocks looked like. They didn't float in water like
pumice stones, but they're probably good for exfoliation, anyway.
Tide pools amid the rock and shrub.
This pool/lake was startlingly green. 
These oystercatchers were all along the water,
chirping and poking about in the sand for food.

Rocks, plants, and water. 
A view of the city from the island. It fits so nicely between those  two big hills! 
Crazy tall trees that bent like no one's business!
Mitchell's not entirely sure what to make of it all.
So he decided to take a break, in his gleaming white clothes.
It's not a snake! Just a bright piece of driftwood hanging out in the lava field.
A very unusual rock formation. Almost like a flower.
Like lightning shooting upward.

I got bored on a beach where we were taking a break.
Now we begin the real ascent to the summit! The boardwalk was much appreciated after so much gravel path.
The rolling hills of Rangitoto's neighbor, Motutapu.

All those stairs...
And here we are at the top! Look at all the friends I have!
Still not sure what that marker thing is.
The crater at the top. As you can tell, it hasn't been active for quite some time.
 After meandering around the summit for a while, we headed back down the mountain to stop by the lava caves for lunch before departing. If we had remembered to bring flashlights (they're called "torches" here...), we could have explored them further, but since we didn't we could only go a short ways into the caves before being stopped by the darkness. Fortunately, we arrived at the caves mere minutes before a tidal wave of other tourists came crashing through, chattering in English, Korean, and Chinese, to do their own spelunking.

Grace, armed with a flash camera, was brave enough to foray deeper into one of the caves.
Creepy but very cool.
Following lunch, we realized that we had less than an hour before the next ferry left (otherwise we'd be waiting another hour and a half for the following ferry). We decided to try and catch the ferry, even though the signs pointing us back to the wharf indicated that the trek would take at least an hour and a half. We ended up running for the last five minutes of the journey, and saw the ferry pulling out of the wharf...but the captains took pity on the sweaty, sunburnt Americans and reversed, letting us hop on board. To celebrate our athletic awesomeness, and parch our quenched throats, we all got smoothies at McDonald's. An unorthodox but happy ending to a marvelous day with friends.

Future updates will come sooner, I promise! My workload is a little lighter this weekend, so blogging/procrastination should happen.

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