 |
| View of the garden |
Last night it poured, according to Bob; I slept like a log and awoke at six to grey and drizzle. We went into the main part of the house at 8 and admired the open plan of the house with its huge windows, multi-layers of wooden decks in the middle of a bit of very dense jungle. Carol gave us very sweet pineapple, yogurt, toast with local honey and homemade lemon curd. Carol and Detlef spend 4-5 months a year guiding bird tours of Peru and we found we have many birding acquaintances in common and have visited a lot of the same places.
 |
| Approaching ferry |
She gave us more maps and directions we set off in light rain to explore this area. We are on the edge of the Bay of Islands, a very convoluted coastline of 150 undeveloped islands and inlets full of yachts. The water, usually turquoise, was very brown from all the runoff. In another month the area will be jammed with tourists and traffic, but today there were just locals around. We drove to a car ferry and scooted across the bay to the tiny village of Russell, once known as “the hell hole of the Pacific” because of the rowdy whalers and sailors who let off steam there; it is now a cute harbor town with old houses and shops.
 |
| A Weka |
We pulled off the road on the way into Russell, due to Carol’s advice, and immediately spotted several Wekas, chestnut-brown flightless rails, the size of hens!
We parked the car in the village and, with our umbrellas turning inside out and back again from the wind, made our way to the Duke of Marlborough Inn for lunch. RR had delicious mushroom/blue cheese soup and I had a bread bowl full of quite good fish chowder with some wine, and a great panna cotta with lychees and mango on top!
 |
| The bar of the Duke of Marlborough |
We walked around Russell a bit more, buying some wine, looking at the oldest church in NZ until we were getting pretty sodden and started back to Kerikeri. As we were zooming along, Bob spotted some brownish ducks in a culvert, whipped the car around to check them out again and identified them as Brown Teal by their white eye rings! The life list continues to grow even with all the wet!
 |
| The oldest church in NZ |
We got back to our room at 3:30 and watched the rain pour down. Around six I warmed up the leftover pasta from last night and we had dinner with our bottle of Sauvignon Blanc which turned out to be pretty bad…surprising for a $20 bottle! We decided to dine in as there’s a chance that we can go out later tonight if the rain lets up to look for the North Island Brown Kiwi with Carol. This location is our only chance for this particular kiwi, so we’re willing to tramp out in the rain a bit more. Even bad wine can make for careless decisions!
The rain started up again so at nine we all decided to call it a day. Carol is going to give us a half day tour tomorrow, plus a try at the kiwi at night, so maybe we’ll have better luck.
No comments:
Post a Comment