We pulled the rookie travel mistake of not having NZD cash in our pockets, so we had to walk to find a bank machine before catching a bus downtown to the Ferry building. Our plan was to catch the ferry to Waiheke Island, spend the day exploring and playing frisbee golf (we like to call it frolf) at a course that Ray had recommended, then meet up with Alex and Tolcher for dinner and spend the night on Waiheke Island. Alex’s friend was gracious enough to offer us the use of her car and cottage on the Island.
Once we found a bank machine, we caught a bus right away to the Britomart stop. We got our tickets to the 1 pm Waiheke Island ferry ($28 round trip), and had some gelato (I had mandarin and blueberry) while we were waiting. The ferry ride was lovely, the clouds were opening and the sun was out. Our ferry made a quick stop at Devenport on the way, and the journey was about 45 minutes. There’s an express ferry that does the trip in 35 minutes as well.
Waiheke Island is referred to as the “Jewel of Auckland” in the Hauraki Gulf, with lots of vineyards, olive groves, restaurants, beaches and villages. Once we got to Waiheke, we immediately found the bus we needed (#2 to Rocky Bay) and saw a bit of the island on the way to Onetangi Sports Park, where the frisbee golf (spelled “frisbie” on the tourist map…ha!). When we arrived at the sports park, it was another 10 minute trek (we’ve been doing a lot of walking on this trip so far) to find a completely quiet complex. Luckily, frisbee golf is free and we had the course to ourselves.We took a picture of the course map (just in case we needed to refer to it) and thank goodness we did, we were referring to that picture every hole. The course was in good shape, but the little wooden plank that marked the tee was sometimes covered by grass and it was a bit of a treasure hunt built into the round of frolf.
I’m pretty bad at frolf, but it was fun. The course was quite hilly and the sun was out in all its glory (go SPF 50!). There were a few times where we had to hunt for a disc, and Will ended up losing one of his drivers (awww…).After frolf, we were itching for a beer and some snackies, so we walked a few kilometers to a vineyard nearby, but it was 5 pm and they were closing. So thankfully there was a bustop at the winery and we hopped on the bus back to Oneroa (the main little town close to the ferry stop at Matiatia).
Will and I found a cute little bar called SandBar with a view of Oneroa Bay (gorgeous!) and had a few New Zealand beers by Mac’s Brewery and snacked on a “calzone” which looked like a quesadilla. Nevertheless, it hit the spot. Tolcher and Alex found us at that bar and from there, we drove to MudBrick Vineyard to grab some wine and cheese with a view all the way back to Auckland, it was so pretty here.
For dinner, we had dinner at the Palm Beach Clubhouse, a cute little restaurant just off of Palm Beach, a 10 minute drive from Oneroa. The dinner was delicious, I had the rack of lamb with a roasted garlic rosemary crust and merlot jus.
After dinner, we drove over to Onetangi Beach and found the cute cottage we were staying at. After five hours of drinking and a full day of exploring, it was no surprise that we crashed pretty hard that night.
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