The view of Auckland from the boat to Rangitoto Island
After Samoa I was back in Auckland for another two days to meet my Irish friend Kelly who I had met onboard the Trans Mongolian Railway a couple of years ago. Kelly was working as an architect during the day so I was off to find something new to do in the city that I now visited for the third time.
Getting out of town and off to one of the islands was the solution, so I booked a return trip to Rangitoto Island to hike up the extinct volcano that the tiny island is made up of. The hike up was not more than an hour, but with the sun striking much hotter than in the city I was struggling with the warm clothes I had brought. With just half a liter of water and no way of filling it up on the uninhabited island I was glad that after getting to the top the next three hours around the island would be flat and downhill. On the way I stopped and went into some lava caves, visited some WWII bunkers and took some pictures of beaches and a lighthouse on the coastal walk.
When I got back I visited my friends office to have some beer at the rooftop there while she was working. Since it was only two days before my birthday she had prepared a barbeque with friends, beers and a birthday cake, which turned into a nice little celebration of my final time in the Pacific. The next morning she also let me ride her motorbike around town in the day before I boarded my nearly thirty hour flight back home to Norway.
