Island

With a couple of sandwiches, Doritos and bottles of water, we headed down to Waiheke Island for $35 in the morning.
Along the way, heaps and heaps of birds.

Heaps and heaps of boats and ships too. This is just one of the many.
Heaps of hills and cliffs too. Again, this is just one of the many.

And we’ve reached Matiatia Bay at Waiheke Island after 40 minutes.

More boats, more green hills and a lot of walking up ahead. Shame we couldn’t rent a car (I didn’t have my driver’s license with me), there are so many nice places further away from the ferry terminal. One of them was Stony Batters (historical WWII site) which was 23km away. Horu Horu Rock’s probably 30km away. There were olive groves too and vineyards. Probably a good idea to do so if you have a day or two to spare.

Onerua Beach, the nearest beach which was a 1.5km walk from the ferry terminal.

Did what I did best, looking for seashells or rather, picking them up then tossing them back into the water.

Heaps of these mussels. Some of them have rather nice blue insides like those blue abalone shells they use to make shell jewelry or crafts.

Lunch was a chicken sandwich and heaps of Doritos.

Then, more walking along the shore walk since it the tide was low. Along the way, heaps of rock formations, seashells, coves and rock pools. Next door was Little Onerua Beach. All in all, walked 7km today.
Went to one of the lookout points on top of a hill for more photography opportunities. The view was amazing. These furry grass look nice but apparently they can give you hay fever or so I was told.
View of Little Onerua Beach.

Still a part of Little Onerua Beach,

View of Onerua Beach,

Then we took a walk through the village and browsed through their gift shops and fruit markets. Along the way, I saw traditional fire baked pizzas for $12 which was pretty reasonable. There was Italian gelato for $16. Waiheke Island’s mostly expensive real estate and fine dining. A lot of liquor stores too.
A new straw hat that I got from one of the island shops because it was rather sunny.

I bought several persimmons from the fruit market and they were incredibly sweet and juicy not to forget, seedless.
Perry bought a bag of apples for $3.

My hat wouldn’t be too practical to wear back in Auckland City but nevermind, I shall make more trips down to seasides and islands especially Muriwai Beach around October to February to view the gannet colony. Great Barrier Island’s would be awesome to visit too, they’ve got this dolphin and whale safari whereby you get on a boat and go mammal spotting on sea. That would be awesome to snap more photographs.
Soon it was time to go back home.

On board, I met Bingo the big brown labrador retriever.
Here I am, back in Auckland City.