I walked up a volcano

I don't think I've quite cracked the whole jet lag thing yet. I woke up at 5am, kind of dozed until 7.30 and was out by 8.30 again. There was a really big fun run through Auckland on this morning. Apparently it is one of the biggest fun runs in the world, about 70,000 people did it today or something. It's 8.4km (bit of an odd distance) round several of the bays in the city. I really wish I'd known about at and brought my running stuff, it would have been brilliant to do.

Instead I found a cafe to have a smoothie and some toast for breakfast. Marmite here is quite nice but it's a little sweeter than marmite at home so it's just not the same. After that I headed over to the pier and brought a ticket to go to Rangitoto Island. It's about 20 minutes by boat away from the main city. Rangitoto was formed about 600 years ago by an erupting volcano, it's dormant now but apparently new volcanoes could appear around Auckland some time in future. Not a particularly comforting thought. Pretty much the whole island is crumbling lava rocks but there are still lots of trees and vegetation growing. It's amazing to see all the green growing out of black rocks. I cut off the main path on to one that wasn't used as much and there were some really lovely flowers as well. It took me about an hour and a half to get to the summit because of my little detour, I ate my lunch whilst looking out to Auckland and all the little islands dotted around the harbour. Although, at one point I had to get up and move fairly quickly as a swarm of wasps decided they liked the look of my sandwich. After lunch I had a walk round the crater edge, the crater is almost a perfect cone and is also covered in trees, it's kind of weird. Then I started to make my way back down. I went via a section called the lava caves. I was able to walk through a long, quite dark, and at one point very low cave that had been formed by the lava flow. It was pretty cool, although a bit dangerous as I couldn't see the floor at a couple of points. My last bit of walking was right on the coastline where there a some little huts called baches. I found them kind of eerie. They used to be holiday homes between the 30's and 70's but none of them are used now. It looks like the set for a bad horror movie, probably involving lost backpackers.

I got the boat back to the mainland and have just been chilling out at the hostel and putting off re-packing. I'm leaving at 7.15 tomorrow morning. Normally this time in the morning would make me feel horrible but I know that I will probably fall asleep stupidly early tonight again and be awake at 6am so it's not so much of a problem.

I've discovered that cadbury's dark chocolate bars are called 'energy' rather than Bournville here. I think this is probably an excuse for me to eat more of it as it's branded as being good for you :)
xx