We took the ferry to Kapiti Island yesterday for a full day tour with lunch. The island was great, we didn't all the birds we'd hoped to, but did get several life birds. The tour and lunch were not as impressive.
Rather than a guided tour through the trails on the island, it was more like an introduction and a short walk to the trailhead of a loop trail up a mountain. We were than on our own to climb the trail to the top where ther was a cliff overlooking the coast. It was more of a forced march as we had to get back to tour's building for lunch at 1pm. The lunch was good, but nothing special and it left us with about an hour and a half to explore on our own. We opted to rush out to a lagoon that we weren't given a chance to see in any detail earlier, but the birds we spied earlier had pretty much left. We did see a very large flock of Pied Stilts, which was good.
Our original plan was to leave today and head north to Lake Taupo, stopping along Tongariro River to search for Blue Ducks and bird the wetlands at the south end of the lake, but we didn't do that.
We went to Wellington instead to visit the national museum, Te Papa. It was an excellent visit. They have everything from modern Maori art to historic artifacts from the complete history of human activity on the islands to the natural history and geology of the country. The museum is a modern well-planned space and it was art unto itself. The cafe was good, too.
After spending two nights at a reasonable hotel, but one that was situated on a main road across from a train station, it was time to find quieter accommodations, closer to Wellington. It was a frustrating search looking for reasonable hotels or B&Bs via Google, but we finally bit the bullet and turned to AirBnB and found a nice house with friendly hosts in the suburb of Lower Hutt. The house backs up to forest, one that we look out onto and it is very quiet.
Tomorrow we are off to Zealandia, a predator-free reserve just outside of Wellington for their morning walking tour. After that will drive north towards Taupo.
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