Thursday night after work we left for Great Barrier Island. This is a large island that sits in the Hauraki Gulf. The island is actually considered part of Auckland. It is a 2 1/2 hour ride on the fast ferry. Or, if you are unfortunate enough to have to take the car ferry it is a 5 hour ride. Watching what people brought on the ferry was good fun. People had surf boards, bikes, dogs, huge coolers, all their camping gear. The reports were the car ferry was packed to the gills with tractors, semi trucks, cars loaded down with surf boards and anything else people thought was indispensable for the weekend.
While the island is part of Auckland, it has very little infrastructure and a very slow pace. The only public utility on the island is phone service. Cell phones work in one spot. Water is rain water, electric is solar or generator produced and toilets are 'long drop' (NZ for outhouse) or septic. We stayed at the Medlends Beach Backpackers lodge. John and I had a private villa (another name for tiny little room with a double bed). We had a shared bathroom and kitchen facilities. We really enjoyed staying at the backpackers and meet some nice families. There were 3 other groups there that we got along with very well.
On Friday, we treked to the highest point on the island. It was not our intention to do the hardest hike first, but we ended up on the top of a mountain. It was about a 2 hour hike each way with the last 1/2 hour being stairs the entire way to the top peak.
Saturday we couldn't hardly walk from all the stairs so we took it a little easier. We did an easy walk to a natural hot spring area and had a sit in the springs. The hot springs were interesting as they were thermal activity produced. You could find really hot spots in the water where the heat was coming up through cracks in the spring bed.
After the hot springs we hiked to some waterfalls. We ended up leaving our car at the top of the mountain pass and walking down hill to the falls which was a good 5k. One of the main forms of transportation on the island is hitch hiking. We picked up a few different people over the weekend and gave them rides(even a group from the East Coast of the US). For my first ever hitch hiking experience, we got picked up by the local police lady. At least this one was not wanting to give John a breath test! John got to sit in the back of the huge Land Rover with her German Shepard police dog for the ride back to the top of the mountain. You could tell this lady was used to driving gravel roads in the mountains. Both the dog and John did some good rolling around during the drive.
We stopped by to see Pippa Saturday evening. Pippa and Richard (PedalTours) are building a bach on the island. They had hoped to have a house warming party this weekend----- the house doesn't have a roof yet. It is running very behind schedule. They are bringing builders over from Auckland 4 days a week to work on it. All the materials have to be sent in as well. You could probably buy a pack of screws on the island but nothing more then that. Richard is in Vietnam with a bike tour so we only saw Pippa and her sister.
Sunday was an even lower key day. We spent most of the day at the beach and still resting up from that mountain hike on the first day.
Monday we went to a secluded beach and went for a really long walk. The beach was the site of a ship wreck in the late 1800's. The ferry left in the late afternoon and we got back to Auckland about 8:00. The seas were very calm both directions. I believe I even saw a dolphin jump on the return trip.
Here is a link to more pictures. http://picasaweb.google.com/jandlmarshall/GreatBarrierIsland2009_04_11?authkey=Gv1sRgCLyxmKXrsbeZCg#
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