Living on the North Shore, the view of Rangitoto is a big part of life, whether it’s as a silhouette on the morning commute, or the central view on an afternoon walk.  As I hadn’t visited the island for well over ten years, I rounded up a few keen beans to do the climb on a sunny Sunday.

Rangitoto Island is a dormant volcano in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf… it might sound scary but although it’s apparently overdue for an eruption it seems pretty quiet for the moment!  It’s really easy to get to from downtown Auckland by ferry and gives you fantastic panoramas over the city.

We rocketed off the ferry and up the path to the summit in record time, which gave us more time to appreciate the magic views.  I always think that you can’t beat Auckland on a good day, and we took the time to soak up the amazing panoramas.

We then headed to Islington Bay, on the other side of Rangitoto and right next to the land bridge to Motutapu.  The skies began to cloud over but the island still provided plenty of interesting landscapes.  Islington Bay is home to a cute collection of baches and we were all wishing that we could call one home.

We chose to walk back around the coastal track to the ferry, which wasn’t quite what I was picturing, but was certainly an adventure!  For most of the walk, which took us around 90 minutes, we were scrambling along a scoria path, some way inland.  The glimpses of the sea were for the most part fairly fleeting, as we were in amongst the bush and scrub.  However when we made our way out near the wharf and again got gorgeous harbour views it felt like it had been worth all the scoria clambering.