Ultimate Saturday in Auckland

Hiking Rangitoto/Mexican Food/Chinese Lanterns/Rugby Game

  Today we had planned to go with a group into Rangitoto. This was such a good idea! Except I'm going to be a little honest and say, I was a little sore from my hike the day before, and waking up to go hiking was a little bit hard! Anyway, we woke up really early and caught the bus at 7:15. When we were walking to the bus though, the moon was so bright and pretty. I then thought it was a little weird I was up and walking early enough to see the moon. Anyway so we caught the bus and took it into the city.

    Once the bus had dropped us of at Britomart, we went over to catch a ferry. In order to get to Rangitoto, you have to take a ferry across. Rangitoto is an uninhabited volcanic island! There is very little man made things over there. You can't even get fresh water over there (luckily I had brought a lot). The ferry ride was about a half hour long. Then the hiking began! 

       We started out on the summit hike. We decided that it would be fun to go straight up to the summit, then do other small hikes after! As you were walking up to the summit, they had little side areas where you could go and rest, or read about the lava, and it was just heaps of volcanic rock, and you can see everywhere it flowed! This was so neat!

(Nancy, Janet, Rebecca)

    At the first of this hike, Janet Diana and I were like man I thought this was going to be a hard hike, and I was going to be really sore. It wasn't too bad at the first, but then by the middle of it, to the end, all of us were so sore! Don't worry though, we made it up to the summit, and it was well worth it!

(Diana, Nancy, Janet)

   Once we were up to the summit, we all just sat and rested ha ha! The three of us who had just hiked the coast to coast were thinking, "Hmm, probably not the best weekend to plan two days of about six hours of hiking!" It was really funny! But after a short little break our legs felt better, and we were ready to hike some more! The next hike we decided to do was to go down to the lava tubes.These were so incredible! First off since we were at the Summit, it was an all down hill hike! It felt so good! Then the next best thing was you could crawl through them! It was incredible! You were suppose to bring a torch to be able to explore them, but none of us really knew that, meaning none of us had a torch. This didn't stop us though! We wanted to see them, so we crawled through them without a torch. Then if we wanted to see something we would use our flash on our camera. It was rather funny! The flash made it even harder, because about 30 seconds after the flash you would be blinded and have to wait for your eyes to change back. It was really funny! But the tubes were neat. For about the first 10 meters you had to crawl through it, after this, you could stand up! it was neat!

 

    Now after we had explored the lava caves we had to decide what hike to do next. Since we all had our suits on, we wanted to go to a bay. There were a couple of different bays. We decided that we wanted to go to McKenzie Bay. We start hiking our way there, when guess what we realize?! In order to get to McKenzie Bay, you have to go up to the summit again! So we did! ha ha! I'm going to be honest and say by the time I got to the summit the second time, I was so sore! It was worth it though. Then going to McKenzie bay was down the mountain and easy! It also was a really pretty hike!

   Well after all of our hiking (which ended up being about six hours) we caught the ferry to go back to Britomart! Once we were back on the land, we were hungry. We decided we would walk around the coast and find somewhere good to eat! Good news, guess what happened, we found a Mexican Restaurant! That is the rarest thing ever! We walked and we were so excited! They had stickers from all over the place, including one from Huntington Beach, In 'n' Out, and from Psych! I was so excited to see things from the states! Anyway so we are going through and ordering, and we were all so excited and we told the people in line how excited and happy we were to be eating Mexican food. They asked us where we are from, and turns out one of the workers was from Emily's home town! Crazy! He was on a working holiday over here! Also he told us everyone that works there is pretty much from the U.S, or has spent a lot of time there, because Mexican food isn't a kiwi thing! I had a pork burrito, and then we all had chips and salsa!

 

 

   Now that we were all stuffed with Mexican food, we went up to the Chinese Light Festival! I had walked through yesterday during the day, but we wanted to go back up. First so we could see some of the performances, and second to get dessert! For dessert, we had a half a pineapple, with ice cream on top! It was yum, as they would say in New Zealand. 

     After we were completely full, and we couldn't even think about food, we had to catch another bus! We were head up to Eden Park! We were going to the Blues vs the Crusaders Rugby game! I'm not going to lie, but rugby is my new favorite sport! I loved it so much! But first off, Nicole and I were really excited! We had a little bit of an issue with the bus! For some random reason they changed the bus stop only for the game! So the bus we were planning on taking never came! We walked up the street, and were able to plan a different bus, but ALL of the bus scheduled changed just for the game! How were we suppose to know that? Anyway once we got there, Nicole and I thought we were going to be late! Neither of us wanted to miss the kick off, so we started running as soon as we got off the bus. Now you see we looked a little stupid, seeing that we were the only one there out of the entire stadium running. We were so excited though! After we realized we looked stupid running, we would slow down to a walk, but pretty soon it turned into a skip walk. We were trying to take a picture in line, but we kept moving up and were in such a hurry so this is the best we go!

       We sat down, and don't worry, we made it for the first of the game, and we even had a little bit of extra time! We had great seats! We were about sixteen rows up from the front! I was so excited! 

 

While we were sitting there, we made good friends with the guys next to us. Okay, so mainly we were asking them questions about and said we would the whole game! Good news though! I totally get rugby now!

   In all of our many questions we asked, we found out that most of The All Black players come from these two teams! Then I also found out that the best first five in the world plays for the Crusaders! We picked one of the best games in the world to go to!

Anyway, we were sitting in the Blues section, and so I automatically became a Blues fan, and guess what!!! THEY WON! But first off every time the blues scored a try, they had fire going off and the crowd went crazy! It was so much fun! It really is my new favorite sport, and I am going to be a rugby fan for life!

After it was over, we hurried out and caught the train! Good news we made it back home safe! It was really such a fun day! I loved everything about it! I can't wait to go to my next rugby game!