On Friday, at 7am, Jacques and I departed Auckland City on a ferry bound for Great Barrier Island. At about 11:45am we arrived at Tryphena Wharf, which was basically a large dock and very skinny road with some parking places. There were two small movie rooms on board and some upstairs outdoor seating. Also a few seasick passengers with the rocky seas towards the end. We picked up our rental vehicle, a tiny Mazda fun top with no radio. At least I got to practice a little bit more of my manual driving, LOTS of gear changing around all those corners and up and down the mountains! Mostly Jacques drove though, I was scared of what would happen if another car was coming around the corner at the same time as us. It didn't happen very often. The island only has 800 locals and often not too many visitors. This 4 day weekend was particularly busy because of the GrabOne deal and holidays. We drove to our accommodation, the Lazy Acres, and met Roy and Maree. They own 13 acres of land and built a small octagon-shaped building just down the hill from their house, which makes for a cozy little rental place. Roy has been living on the island for 40 years and you can tell he loves sharing about the island and his life, basically to any company he gets. There is not much phone service on the island, only down in Tryphena, and the houses all run off of gas, generators and solar power. Everything is very DARK at night.
The scenery is beautiful and the white sandy surf beaches are amazing as well, not to mention basically deserted. The water was pretty warm and we went for a swim one day after our hike up Mt. Hobson (the highest peak on the island, 621m, offereing 360 degree views of the entire island). There were many, many, many, many stairs, but the view from the top was worth it and we were lucky with clear skies and could see the beautiful landscape and sea all around the island. We checked out some of the rocky harbors on the west coast of the island, and the bays up north. We literally drove down every paved road on the island and almost all of the unpaved ones as well. It doesn't take long to explore the entire place by car. On foot is another story, there are tons of walking/hiking tracks all over the place. After hour steep one to Mt. Hobson, we kept the gradient a little easier with a nice flat walk to the Kaitoke Hot springs. There is literally a hot stream running through the woods and people have built little pools with the rocks in the area and you can just sit and soak in them, nice warm spa temperature. No digging required like hot water beach, and you don't have to wait for low tide, and you don't need the flow of cool water because they are a much more manageable temperature!
On the last day we got a bit of rain, and realized after we'd packed up to check out at 10am that we could have hung out until we needed to leave, so we drove around to some of the last places we hadn't seen yet and then went to the one cafe in Tryphena, only to find it closed at 3pm, but the Irish Pub next door opened at 3pm. Everyone going back on the ferry was there, literally it was the only place to go, and still about a 15 min drive from the ferry. It's definitely a different lifestyle over there, and if you weren't doing a multiple day hike or have nice beach weather, there wouldn't be too much to do! Also, the food is crazy expensive, we brought all of our own and had a our meals planned before we arrived, everything cooked on a gas hub and had to boil all our water before drinking it! We just wanted to get some more bread and the mini "supermarket" if you can call it that, that we went into only had a couple different kinds of frozen bread...hopefully frozen WAY before the sell by date because our rolls said best before 28th Jan, 2011! It's nearly May! Just feels like island life is living in the past a little bit, but it was definitely a cool experience and worth seeing all of the natural beauty. This whole country seems to have quite a bit of that to offer!
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| Just off the ferry and picking up our fun top! |
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| Medlands Beach, also they have their very own Mt. Sugarloaf, the pointy one in the back |
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| Kaitoke Beach |
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| an example of the roads |
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| Harataonga Beach |
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| Views of the entire island from Mt. Hobson |
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| the whole inside! door leads to bathroom/shower |
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| our "house" |
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| Kaitoke Hot Springs |
