June 20, 2023
Every night since we’ve been here, the weather forecast has not been promising. But every day bar one, we’ve had fine weather. And even the one day it rained while we were out and about, it was a short shower only, and no drop in temperature. The trend continued today. In fact, it was positively balmy, at least on Waiheke Island, which was our destination for the day.
Started the day as usual with a coffee (above), found our ferry to Waiheke (our AT Hop cards have been geting good use), and three-quarters of an hour later, voilà, we were there.
It was my first visit to Waiheke, but L has visited it before, though not from a ferry. I’m sure he’ll tell you about it when he gets around to posting, but in short, he has circumnavigated the island from a sailing ship (one of the Spirit ships) and has gone ashore from another sail ship (Tenacious) when it anchored in one of the bays. But never by ferry, so he was a happy chap today indeed.
We got lucky with the weather, for sure. It was summer-warm and balmy. If I had to find one word for Waiheke, it would be sub-tropical, at least for the short time we were there. It reminded me of Northland.
We walked from the ferry terminal in Matiatia Bay to Oneroa for a second coffee of the day, and from there walked along the coast to Surfdale. My knees were complaining after yesterday’s efforts, so from there we travelled by bus to Onetangi, and back, in time to catch the 4pm ferry back.
There’s heaps more to see than we managed in a day of walking and bussing — there’s a bike trail round the island, tramping and walking tracks all over, and of course the wine trail. I reckon mid-June is a good time to visit because there’s not a lot of visitors — apparently in high season it’s wall-to-wall tourists. Today Waiheke presented as laid-back, a bit of a hippy vibe sitting alongside wealth. It felt lived in, authentic, and not over-hyped.
Off Highway One 