Roadtrip: Race to Rangitoto

After getting up and ready for the day’s excursion, we braved Auckland’s early morning rush hour traffic (surprisingly, they do actually have one!) and made our way to St Helier’s Beach – quite a feat considering I was doing the navigating! As NZ’s largest city with one million inhabitants, I get the impression that people all get in their cars and drive about for half an hour and then go home, just to feel important and big up the idea of being in a city –it seemed that nobody appeared to be going anywhere in a hurry, so the traffic was nowhere even as bad as trying to get down the Uxbridge Road of a morning.

We arrived at the beach in good time and found our way to where we were supposed to be – for our Kayaking Adventure! We met our tour leader Liz and another girl called Anna (Liz’s friend from uni) by the water and had a chat about our kayaking experience and the plan for the day – again, being winter, they would usually be taking a group out but it was just us. Shortly after we had slipped into our delightful water/windproof jackets, life jackets and splash decks, we hopped into the kayaks and started making our way across the channel to Rangitoto Island. Thankfully for us, the morning was slightly overcast, which meant we weren’t baking to death in the sun – considering the amount of physical exertion that the paddling took, this was a very good thing indeed. Liz had put us in a tandem kayak, whilst she and Anna were in individual kayaks, they were impressed at our kayaking abilities as she had expected us to take about an hour and a half to get across the channel, but in fact it took us only fifty minutes – we had powered our way across! The kayaking itself was not too bad as the water was relatively flat and there was not much in the way of other water traffic to contend with, although my arms were questioning my intentions at times!

When we arrived at the island, we took the kayaks out of the water and sat down by the jetty. Liz produced from a bag in her kayak tea and scones with jam! This made for a most welcome morning snack after the kayak across! As we sat there, we all chatted and were amused by the large group of school kids who were about to start their tour of the island – the teachers shouting at the children in both English and Maori! We took the decision to give them a head start on the walk, so carried on chilling out for a bit, before we started on the walk ourselves.

Rangitoto is a volcanic island, formed 600 years ago after an eruption. It stands at 260m above sea level. The walk up the volcano was interesting as we passed much volcanic rock and vegetation, including pohutakawa trees (also known as NZ’s Christmas Tree as it only blossoms with its red flowers at Christmas time). The terrain was actually quite harsh – the track was not nice and smooth; it involved clambering over rocks. As we walked, we chatted to Liz and Anna – they are both outdoor sports enthusiasts, so after all the things I have been up to of late, it meant we had plenty to talk about!

At one point we came to some caves and Liz produced torches from her bag (it really seemed like a Mary Poppins bag!), so we climbed down into them and crawled through. It was nothing like the caving in Waitomo, but was fun nonetheless. There were no wetas to be seen, it was just fun scrambling over the rocks in the dark, squeezing through some tightish gaps and crawling along the floor! The caves weren’t extensive, so it only took five or ten minutes until we were re-emerging at the other end!

We continued our walk and got to the point where the track became much steeper; it also was the point where we caught up with the school kids. All the kids were complaining about the walk and were not impressed with the incline – I think it would have been much easier for them if they had ploughed more energy into actually walking, rather than using all that energy into whinging! We powered past them, which proved a challenge to some of them, who then took it upon themselves to chase us, but this was short lived and very quickly they stopped running and instead went back to whining!

At the top of the steep section, we came to the massive crater left by the eruption and some boardwalks and steps which led us up the last little bit to the summit of the island. The walk in total had taken us about an hour and it had been well worth it - from the top we had some great views in each direction across Auckland. Whilst it had been a benefit when we were kayaking, it was a shame that it was overcast, as it blighted the outlook, making it rather grey. We sat up there for a bit and took in the sights, then the school children arrived at the summit with us and we took that as a good cue to leave and head back down to the water!

Again, the walk was not too bad; at some points it got a bit slippery underfoot, but we managed it fine. Back at the kayaks, we hopped in and began our paddle back across the water. This time, the water was a lot more choppy and the wind was against us, which required lots more energy. It started to drizzle slightly, but it was more the waves crashing against the front of the kayak that were soaking me beyond belief and the salt water disagreeing with my contact lenses that rendered me partially sighted for much of the journey! Nevertheless, Mike and I once again powered through and we managed to make it across the channel in under an hour, which continued to impress Liz and Anna. I have to admit that this time, my arms did protest a lot more severely and when we finally arrived on the shore, I was more than happy to put the paddle down! All in all, we had kayaked around 10km – sea kayaking was great fun, but is certainly like nothing I have ever experienced before and definitely not like a nice, relaxing afternoon paddle down the Thames.

We staggered back to the car and went back to the hostel, absolutely shattered! A hot shower and several cups of tea later, I was feeling better, but neither of us fancied cooking or going anywhere exciting so we once again took the easy option for dinner, only this time going for KFC! Once we’d had that, we just about had enough energy to sink a couple of beers and slump in front of the tv, where I promptly fell asleep!