Tue, Dec 10 - Wonderful Wellington!

Jane had breakfast ready for us at 8: yogurt and fruit and scrambled eggs with great bacon.   We set off into Mt. Victoria Park above our B&B and hiked a mile through woods and past signs pointing out Hobbit filming sites!









 We had lovely views over the harbor before descending on a foot trail down a steep hillside, winding through colorful gardens and bungalows.









 We reached the coast and walked along by cafes on one side and the beach (64 degree water) with kids in kayaking classes on the other.  It was warm and sunny and quite idyllic.

We walked through the small harbor area and over a fantastic geometrical pedestrian bridge crossing the highway and into the city where we climbed onto the cable car that takes one up to the top of the hill overlooking the city.  There we wandered through the Botanic Garden: fragrance, Australian, rose,  and other types of gardens until we finally found the Garden Café, where we had bowls of mushroom soup, a sandwich, a bowl of fries and organic cola.

Pedestrian Bridge

Thus revived, we walked downtown and Bob hopped on the #2 bus for home and Hilary and I cruised through Kirkcaldie & Stains Department store, admiring the colorful and expensive local fashions.  We caught a #5 bus which let us off right in front of Booklovers’ B&B at 4 PM.  I greeted Bob who had checked his email and found to all our amazement that Air New Zealand had responded to his polite, but firm, email with an apology and telling us that they were upgrading our economy return flight to LAX to Premium Economy and our long-sought Pods!!  Too cool!

View from the Botanic Gardens

We decided to splurge for dinner and Jane made us a reservation for Hippopotamus Restaurant at the  Museum Hotel.  We took the bus downtown and walked a few blocks to the hotel and found the Hippo on the third floor.  We got a table with a harbor view and a waiter rolled over a cart with champagne and bottles of fruit liquors and made us kir, strawberry and fig Royales!  I then had a starter of duck liver mousse wrapped in mulled wine jelly and served with baby pears and truffle foam.  Bob had compressed watermelon with prosciutto and scampi, and Hil had tortellini with creamed leeks.

Hil's fish in crayfish foam

Chocolate dessert

 I next had snapper with mussels and  black ink squid gnocchi, Hil had fish with lentils, and Bob beef fillet with a short rib and morel sauce.  For dessert we split a complicated chocolate mousse on a biscuit with meringue toasts on top.  We grabbed a taxi and got home by 10:30!  Tomorrow we take the ferry to the South Island!

Mon, Dec 9 - Flying to Wellington

Peter Jackson's plane

Bob and I went down to breakfast and there was Hilary who had arrived at about 2 AM, with her luggage, and was all chipper and ready to tour!
We took the hotel shuttle over to the airport - we were leaving from the domestic terminal.  The bus driver got into an altercation with a driver who stopped suddenly in front of him and forgot to announce that we had arrived there, and proceeded to drive on to the international terminal.  We hauled our luggage out of the bus and onto an airport jitney and finally made it back to the correct place.  We got through security with our shoes and belts on and proceeded to Gate 28, when, there out the window, we spied the very Air New Zealand 777 that we had been scheduled to fly to Auckland last week - all gussied up with pictures of hobbits on the outside and inside the comfortable Pods we had purchased!!

We boarded our plane to Wellington  - without ever once showing our IDs -
and in 45 minutes we were landing in the capital.  We got a taxi to the Booklovers’ B&B, run by author, Jane Tolerton.  It is situated up a hill next to a park and surrounded by old brightly painted Victorians - just like being in SF/Santa Cruz about 50 year ago! The same colorful, gritty vibe!  Jane showed us our rooms - we share a bath down the hall - and gave us a map and we set off.

Booklover's B&B

We walked downtown and had some soup and bread in a café and soon found ourselves on the waterfront and at the Te Papa Museum, the national museum of NZ, and a marvelous place to visit.  We took the elevator up to the sixth floor for a view of the small city and harbor and then walked down stairs.

Wellington Harbour

 We skipped the special exhibits of the Aztecs and Impressionists and headed for the amazing Mana Whenua display of Maori culture.  There was a full size war canoe, covered with beautiful carvings and decorated with mother-of-pearl and albatross feathers.  There was also a sailing boat with sails made of woven reeds, a prayer house, weapons, statues and weavings.  We were really impressed with the beauty and intricacy of all the objects and the opportunity to get an understanding of the Maori culture.

Maori boat

Maori storage house

We caught a bus that let us off right in front of Booklovers’ and relaxed and unpacked a bit.  For dinner we decided to go to Jane’s recommendation just down the hill: the Hop Garden, a very cool beer garden/restaurant.  We got pints of three different local beers and had a tasting - all very good!
Bob had stuffed roast veal, I had potato gnocchi wrapped around ricotta and veggies, and Hil had snapper.  We split chocolate mousse with vanilla ice cream and black cherries, and a berry crumble - great!    We walked home and to bed.

Delicious desserts!

Sun, Dec 8 - Returning to Auckland

Auckland skyline

After two more of Carolyn’s delicious omelets, we departed, stopping long enough to pick up yet another fab Beef & Chutney sandwich at the neighborhood bakery.

We got back on Hwy. 1 and headed south through Auckland, past the airport and turned east on a scenic route along the coast.  By eleven we had reached Miranda where a coastal preserve with bird hides is located.  Environmentalists started buying up tidal marsh about 30 years ago and now have an educational center, trails and hides.

Bird hide 

It started raining once we had parked and started out, but we don’t go anywhere without our umbrellas and windbreakers anymore, so we were OK.  It was dead high tide and from the hides we could see thousands of shorebirds on a thin sandbar quite far out in the ocean, so all we could see was a black mass of Oystercatchers, beige Godwits and white gulls.  In front of the hide was a huge mound of crushed shells, part of the Chenier Plain - a rare geological phenomenon consisting of a succession of shell ridges, separated by raised mud embayments extending from the base of the hills behind us out to the shore line and about 4500 years old.

Chenier Plain

We went to the preserve headquarters and had our sandwich on their terrace, and decide to return to the hide before going back to Auckland, and we found that the tide had gone out far enough so that most of the birds were now wading and probing the mud, and there was a small flock of Wrybills, small grey and white waders with a black throat band and a very unusual right-hand bend to the tip of their bill - what that’s for we don’t’ know but it’s very cute.

Black-billed Gull

Wrybills

We started back for Auckland between downpours and arrived at the Airport Holiday Inn where my sister, Hilary, had gotten us a room at this very nice hotel.  She’s on her way via Honolulu and Brisbane and expects to land here at midnight.  We unloaded our luggage and handed in the car to APEX car rental.  They kindly drove us back to our hotel where there is a coin operated laundry!!!  Yaah!  Clean laundry!

All cleaned up, we headed into dinner and opted for the a la carte rather than the steam table buffet.  Bob had a grilled lamb rump on mash and I had large shrimp on avocado and a plate of roasted kumara (Polynesian sweet potatoes), and then we noticed people returning from the buffet with plates of raw oysters!!   All-you-can-eat oysters and I passed them up??!!

To bed and we will hopefully see Hil and her luggage tomorrow morning!

Sat, Dec 7 - A Miserable Trip to a Magical One!

We went into  breakfast at 7 AM and Carolyn and Arnold were there with everything we’d ordered on the check list they had given us last night.  We had booked a package with them which included the room, breakfast and passage on the Tiritiri Matangi Island day trip boat.  We walked back to our little shopping center and went into the Bakery to pick up a beef and chutney sandwich for lunch on the island and Carolyn gave us a plastic box to put it in as the instructions for landing on the island are very strict and one can’t bring unsealed boxes on shore in case a mouse may have entered one’s lunch bag between night and leaving for the island!

Our Catamaran

We took off, mouse-free,  for the departure pier at Gulf Harbour at the end of the peninsula,  and watched yacht after yacht leave the harbor as it is Saturday morning.  Our large motorized catamaran pulled up to the pier with passengers from Auckland and we climbed aboard for the  quick 15-mnute trip to Tiritiri Matangi Island.  This island was used as a livestock ranch until 1973 when it was taken over as a research station to encourage populations of birds and plants that were rapidly going extinct.  Hundreds of volunteers have  planted native trees and shrubs on the island and conducted breeding programs for various rare species of birds and lizards in this predator-free environment, and forty years later they are having a lot of success.

We landed about 10:30 AM in a light drizzle that soon turned into pretty heavy rain.  There are only a few shelters on the island and the catamaran doesn’t return until 3:15, so when it’s raining, there’s not much you can do except get wet!!  We walked up to the Visitors’ Center and were pretty sodden even with umbrellas.   Fortunately one of the volunteers spotted Bob as a Birder-in-Need and came over to us to say she had just heard a

Kokako calling and would we like to join her in trying to see it?  There were eight unique birds on the island that Bob really wanted to see and that was one and a difficult one to see.  Our volunteer spent about 30 minutes with us dashing about, following the haunting, mournful call of the Kokako when we finally spied this lovely robin-sized bird, all blue grey with a black streak through the eye and bright blue wattles hanging near its bill!  That and the clearing weather raised Bob’s spirits.  Suddenly the surrounding water turned turquoise and the birds became much more active.

Bob on the boardwalk

North Island Robin

We ate our beef and chutney sandwich which was really delicious  and set off on a winding boardwalk trail down to the shore.  The walk was through thick forest with a lot of bird action.  We struggled to see the tiny North Island Robin and then saw the beautiful Saddleback, all glossy black with a chestnut “saddle” on his back and the small yellow, black and white Stitchback, all of which have populations of under 10,000 in the world.  We got to the coast lined with enormous  New Zealand Christmas Trees, Metrosideros excelsa, all green leaves and bright red flowers against the tropical coast.  Really spectacular!  We got back to the pier just as the catamaran was pulling up and returned to Manly and our B&B by 4:30.

NZ Christmas Tree

We walked over to  Jambalaya, a New Orleans restaurant, and had a very good rack of spareribs  and  a pulled pork sandwich for dinner.

View from the  Bayview Manly B&B

Fri, Dec 6 - Heading Back South

We had breakfast with Carol at nine and chatted for quite a while, finally tearing ourselves away from her lovely hospitality at 10:30.

Hokianga Harbour

We headed west through rolling pasture land and suddenly came upon a wide estuary of Hokianga Harbour. The country’s pretty narrow at this point and it only took us a hour to get to the west coast! We saw a turnoff for a scenic overview and fortunately took it, walking up onto a headland overlooking the vast dune field on the north side of the river mouth and the little fishing villages to the east.   It was beautiful and warm and we could have walked on the trails for hours, but time was passing, so we set off south.

Tane Mahuta

We wanted to see Tane Mahuta, the largest Kauri tree, and after a bit we entered a large old forest area full of huge tree ferns and dense trees.  We stopped at the Tane Mahuta turn-off and walked a short ways to this wonderful amazingly fat old tree, about 2000 years old.   It’s not very tall compared to redwoods, but has an immense, perfectly round and straight grey trunk with stubby fat, epiphyte-covered branches emerging from the top.  We sat for a while and admired it.  Back at our car we saw a little van selling “America” hotdogs and got one covered with grilled onions, tomato sauce (ketchup) and spicy mustard from a charming lady and split it for lunch.

We continued 21 miles through this lovely forest before emerging into more pasture land full of cows and very clean, newly-sheared sheep.  We drove due east for 50 miles before merging with Highway 1 once again.

Waipu Beach

Pair of Variable Oystercatchers

 We detoured north for 20 miles to return to Waipu Beach where we had tried to find the Fairy Terns a few days ago.  We walked way out onto a sand bar trying to see the terns on the far side but couldn’t accurately observe them.  We did see lots of beautiful NZ Variable Oystercatchers pairing off and simulating nesting behavior on a soon-to-be-flooded sandbar.

By this time it was getting late and we started back to our next B&B with is located  just north of Auckland on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula.  We got to the Bayview Manly B&B about six and checked into our room with a nice basket of snacks and a bottle of wine!  We booked a package that includes a boat ride tomorrow to Tiritiri Matangi Island, a famous location where many very endangered species of birds live in a predator-free environment.

We cleaned up and set off for a little shopping center next door that consists of several restaurants, a liquor store and an ATM, all of life’s necessities!  We had been told that the restaurants were all BYOB, and so stopped at the liquor store for a couple of bottles of beer to go with our Indian food.  When we got to the Indian Village Restaurant, we were told that they did sell alcohol, but would accept outside wine but couldn’t allow outside beer!!   We ordered and Bob went back to the liquor store and exchanged the beer for a very nice bottle of “Bone Dry Riesling” which went very well with our lamb in spinach sauce and chicken with sesame seeds.

Back to the room for a little TV, then sleep.

Thu, Dec 5 - A Sunny Day of Birding in the Far North!

I awoke to a torrential downpour at six, but at breakfast Carol said that the storm had come from the north-west and it should clear from that direction, so we should take off as planned at nine.

Carol took us in her car which gave Bob a break from driving on the “wrong” side of the road and gave him a chance to relax and sightsee.  We drove past flooded fields and rivers flowing over their banks and started to see some Blue Sky!  We learned later that this area received 7.5” of rain from this storm!

Flooded fields

Pied Stilt

White-faced Heron

Carol stopped frequently so we could check out the birds which was great as she knows all the hot spots.  We drove to Doubtless Bay, a wide curving bay of endless sand, pretty resorts and vacation villas.

Coopers Beach at Doubtless Bay

We almost made it to the west coast and 90-mile beach, but Carol stopped at an estuary where an old fishing boat has been disintegrating for many years and has become a nesting site for the beautiful White-fronted Tern.

White-fronted Tern, with fish!

Tern nesting spot

We turned around at the south end of the Aupouri Peninsula, the tiny northern-most finger of land that juts up from the north island and started back continuing to stop for new birds.  We drove up into a forest reserve to an elevation of 1000’ and entered the Manginangina Forest Reserve boardwalk.  It was like entering a fairyland!  Suddenly we were in a forest of huge, ancient Kauri trees standing like grey, perfectly straight columns surrounded by large tree ferns and epiphytes.  Just amazing!  The remaining pockets of these trees are now protected and Monterey Pine plantations now supply lumber, but it’s a tragedy that more weren’t saved.

Kauri Trees

Forest reserve boardwalk

We returned home at 4 PM to find the grey drippy garden full of sunshine and more birds!  We’re relaxing until 8 PM when Carol will take us out to search for the North Island Brown Kiwi.

We cleaned up a bit and headed into town at six to make our daily visit to an ATM and then drove down to the river to find  the Wharepuke European & Thai restaurant which is nestled in a patch of dense jungle.  We sat outdoors as the temperature was perfect and found ourselves surrounded by birds and saw many old friends from earlier today.  The restaurant turned out to be really excellent, best meal by far of the trip!   We got a very good bottle of Marsden Black Rock Chardonnay 2012 and split a plate of chicken satay.  Bob had  Bluenose, a lovely slab of fish on mash (mashed potatoes) and I had the green Thai seafood chili.  We split a hot Belgian chocolate pot with thick cream which was spectacular, and returned to Birders’ Rest with minutes to spare.

Bob's Bluenose

We grabbed our binoculars and Carol drove us abut 30 minutes to a high hillside overlooking pastureland, and resembling very much Marin County in California.  We crossed a stile and began hiking down almost a mile as night fell.  At the bottom of the hill there was a stream and the land was somewhat marshier.  Suddenly we heard the low croaking call of the female North Island Brown Kiwi, answered soon by the high piercing cry of the male!  We climbed though small gates in the fences and scrambled up and down  while Carol played her flashlight around in the bushes trying to locate one of the birds.  We continued on a ways and suddenly heard surf and found ourselves on a little cove right on the ocean, at the north end of the Bay of Islands!  We had no idea we were that close to the sea.  The moon was a tiny crescent and the stars were brilliant!  We started back and suddenly Carol’s light caught the waddling, bouncing shape of the male Kiwi scurrying around in search of worms, their main food.  We saw him again as he cruised up a hill and finally saw the bill: he looked just like the familiar kiwi on the old shoe polish can!  They are about 5 lbs, 22” from bill tip to tail end and fairly hefty little birds whose movement is more like a fat ground hog than a bird!  Very exciting!

We stumbled back up to car and returned home just before midnight!  We’re going to sleep in and have breakfast at nine tomorrow.

Wed, Dec 4 - A Rainy Day's Birding in the Bay of Islands

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.

Sun-Tue, Dec 1 - 3 - Flying to New Zealand

Sunday afternoon I took Miss Maddie down to the Cat House Hotel and she walked right into her usual Junior Suite and settled in.  Such a relief to have a confident cat that doesn’t freak when we go on vacation!

We were worried about getting to LAX for our 10PM flight as last summer we had somehow scheduled our departure day for the second busiest travel day of the year!  Thanks to a CalTrans’ web site we could see that traffic was a total gridlock from Santa Barbara through Carpinteria, so we took back roads, slow and scenic but without the stress of stop-and-go.  We got on the 101 as traffic loosened up and got to LAX and Air New Zealand by six - no worries!

We got Nate ‘n’ Al’s hotdogs and a G&T for me and relaxed until the 9:15 boarding.  We had splurged and purchased Premium Economy tickets which feature sleeping pods!  We figured we needed a good night’s sleep so we could land  13 hours later and take off driving north 150 miles to our first B&B, birding along the way.

We climbed aboard our section on the jet only to find regular seats!!  Good leg room but narrow seats nine abreast rather than the advertised six!  It turns out that Peter Jackson of the Hobbit fame had countermanded our jet so it could be painted with a hobbit theme (to carry a dragon back to NZ…??) and we were put on an older version of the plane. Didn’t make sense but there it was…. and we had paid well over double the price of regular economy  for only slightly better seats @%%$  We wouldn’t have considered doing it if we had known about the callous double cross to come!  We did get a very good pinot noir and dinner, but how good can an airline dinner be? Needless to say RRZ wasn’t happy.  Our attendant gave Bob her business card with an email address to send his grievances to.  He’s looking forward to this battle!

We landed in Auckland on Tuesday morning  to overcast skies, went through immigration and customs without any problems and got a jitney to take us to Apex Car Rental.  We took off in a Toyota Corolla at 9:15 AM and headed north through Auckland and the northern suburbs and finally got out of town on Rt. 1, the main north-south highway.

After a couple of hours we turned off Rt. 1, which is a mostly two-lane, fairly high-speed, winding highway with no center strip which requires a lot of attention!  We drove to Tawharanui Regional Park which consists of a large peninsula at the base of which a vermin-proof fence has been installed.  800 years of Maoris and 200 of Brits have decimated many of the native birds.  The Maori ate the large moa birds and the English introduced weasels, cats, foxes, etc, so the birds which had evolved with few predators were helpless with this onslaught.

Finally in the last 40 years a large effort has been made to protect and encourage the recovery of the remaining species . The last bird to go extinct was in 1973!   It started drizzling as we entered the park, but we saw quite a few lovely, and some new, birds, including the Red-Billed Gull that has bright red feet as well, a Buff-Banded Rail, and the musical Tui, a large dark bird with a tuft of white feathers at its throat like a cravat!  Although it started to rain quite a bit, the local New Zealanders kept on surfing, hiking, running!   I guess when you live in a wet climate you just have to ignore all the moisture.  Meanwhile I was trying to juggle my binoculars, umbrella, and bird guide!

Red-billed Gull

Wal & Dog herding sheep

If any of you are fans of the great kiwi comic strip, Footrot Flats, you will recognize Wal, the farmer, on his ATV with  loyal Dog along side skillfully herding a few hundred sheep.  It was amazing to watch!

We continued up the coast and finally in the late afternoon neared the Bay of Islands where our B&B, Birders’ Rest, is located.  After a very convoluted trip around many traffic circles we drove through the town of Kerikeri and reached our accommodation about 4:15, and were greeted by Carol  Davies,  who with her husband, Detlef, runs a small B&B for birders.  Our room overlooks a lush garden where we hope to be able to watch birds without getting too wet tomorrow.  Carol said she was grateful for the rain as they have been having a drought!!  Not by Santa Barbara standards!!

Birding in the wind and rain
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We drove back into town in the pouring rain and had a pleasant meal at an Italian restaurant filled with rather raucous Kiwis and managed to get back before nightfall to collapse and recover.