North Island Tour

I noticed that after about six weeks of traveling it became hard to sustain the same level of curiosity, enthusiasm, and motivation. Micah summed it up one day about that time when he descended from the bus and announced: "That's it. I've had it. I can't take one more *&(*&*#@ beautiful thing." Another amazing geotechnic phenomenon? Who cares. More rare animals? Maybe later.

Fortunately, the itinerary is set, we are surgically attached to the group, and off we go anyway to see the next most incredible thing. And we're glad we did.

So here’s what we did on the final leg of our New Zealand experience:

March 16th we left Wellington very early in order to arrive at the Mt. Bruce Bird Sanctuary, to the north in the Wairarapa district. This is the location where takahe were bred after it was discovered in 1948 that they were not extinct after all. British naturalist and author Gerald Durrell has a great description of the challenges faced by “Operation Takahe” in his book “Two in the Bush.” Logistical hurdles of getting delicate eggs out of the extremely inaccessible reaches of Fiordland were surmounted in various creative ways and included a bantam chicken precursor to “Fear Factor.”

That evening we slept at a Maori marae, or communal meetinghouse. An elder of the tribe explained the ornamentation of the marae and the significance of each element. Ancestry and traditional stories are very important in Maori culture, and we learned some of the lore about the origins of the tribes as well as about some of the challenges facing the Maori people today as they try to hold on their culture and language.

Like many traditional cultures around the world, Maori culture has been eroding since Europeans came to New Zealand in the 1800's. Somehow it has held on, even through early 20th-century government attempts to ban use of the Maori language. Maori make up over 14% of the general NZ population. In comparison, Australian aborigines are less than 3% of Australia's population, and in the US Native Americans are less than 2% of the total population. Maori language is still hanging on and is an official language of New Zealand.

From the marae we visited the Cape Kidnappers Australasian gannet colony on Hawke’s Bay. These gannets are related to the blue-footed booby and this is the largest mainland breeding colony. For their very first flight, the chicks take off directly to Australia and don’t come back for two or three years; fewer than 25% ever make it back to breed. The colony is 5 miles down the peninsula and is only accessible when the tide is low, so we got a ride there via trailer pulled by a tractor over the beach and through the water, another one of those things like bungee jumping and zorbing that only a Kiwi would think of.

The next few days focused on geothermal sights around Lake Taupo and learning about extremophiles that thrive in very inhospitable environments, like super hot water and acid lakes. In this region of NZ the ongoing collision of the Pacific and Australian plates produce lots of unusual sights, including bubbling mud pits, geysers, multi-colored acid streams, ponds, and lakes. The ultimate was probably the visit to White Island, a very young volcanic landform off of Whakatane that is still in the process of becoming an island.

Between trips to see the effects of plate tectonics we learned more about the collision between NZ and humans. In Otorohanga we had probably our best view of kiwi and some of the other endemic birds, many of them highly endangered. Nearby we visited a commercial prawn breeding facility that doubles as tourist attraction and met Shawn the Prawn (the 19th). A few days later, we visited the trout (introduced in the late 19th century from California) breeding facility, somewhat puzzlingly run by the Department of Conservation.

With the arrival of the equinox here, we can certainly feel fall in the air, especially in the mountains as we returned to Wellington. Days here have been warm in the sun, but passing clouds or a step into the shade is a quick reminder that summer is over.

--Valeurie