Tiritiri Matangi is a 220 hectare island 30km north-east of central Auckland. It is now a wildlife sanctuary, home to many rare native animals. Although we hadn't heard of many of these animals we had also been told it was just a beautiful island to go and well worth a visit, so we did! It's a short hop from where we were staying at Gulf harbour to island via ferry, which involved a bio-security check to make sure we didn't bring any weed seeds or rodents with us. After a brief talk about the island and what we shouldn't do, we were set free to explore the island as we please. The beach around 10 minutes from the landing was amazing, with views right across the bay back to the most recent volcano in the Auckland area, Rangitoto. Though the ferry was packed on the way to the island, it didn't take long to loose everybody and it was incredibly peaceful and relaxing. I spent an hour clambering along
the shore before I had to turn around because of an angry oystercatcher who's nest was somewhere close so decided to keep dive-bombing me. We spent the rest of the day wandering the island before returning to the beach a last time before departing. The Whangaparaoa peninsula, where we had been staying the last few days was an amazing place to live, but as we were finding out, had a limit to the activities that could be done; so we decided to venture into the city for a few days. We caught the ferry on Monday morning with the intention of returning on Friday. So we moved into our hostel, which was the YMCA hostel around 5 minutes walk from the Sky Tower - basically the center of the city.
No comments:
Post a Comment