Kapiti/Lighthouse/Wildlife Center

Saturday morning 7 am promptly we called to see if Kapiti Island tours would boat us across to the island. The answer was a yes. We drove about an hour and a half to arrive at the dock for our tour. We were ferried to Kapiti Island, given a brief intro and left for 6 hrs with about 50 other similarly interested folks.

Kapiti Island is 5 kilometers off the southwest coast of New Zealand's North Island. It is 10 kilometers long, 2 kilometers wide and is mountainous. Mid island there is a coastal trail and a trail to a lookout that gains 527 meters in about a 8 kilometer round trip- - this we did. The attraction of Kapiti is that since the 1890's there has been a steady concerted effort to make the island predator free - to return it to the time before Europeans landed in the area bringing the feral cats, possums, weasels etc. Before Europeans the only mammals in the area were a few bats and humans. The guide who dropped us said, "Each morning at 6am Aotearoa's National Chorus, original anthem is best heard here on Kapiti." Referring to the chatter, calls and songs of unique birds. And as she said it a New Zealand bellbird began an affirming song. Throughout the day we heard very much what she meant. Kaka's a type of parrot, Tui's, bellbirds, Takahe's etc. Far more birds observed our behavior than we saw them, but still--- they yelled /screamed at us to get off the island or perhaps serenaded us - not knowing their exact language, we couldn't be quite sure. So we just enjoyed it and walked on.

Off the island that afternoon we pursued our least favorite NZ adventure--driving-- and took it to an altogether new height of terror. Attempting a shortcut from hiway 1 to hiway 2 we saw on the map hiway 8. It was marked as a hiway and we saw that it went seemingly more quickly though the mountains. 2 days later we would read the description of this road on google - "30 winding kilometers of single lane road with recommended speeds of 15 to 25 kilometers per hour." This single lane road is not single lane each way. That's single lane on switchbacks - that's recommended speeds up to 15 miles per hour. We traveled prayerfully on this road for several kilometers before finding a switchback wide enough for a 3 point turn.

That evening we stayed at Castlepoint near the lighthouse - a place of safety.

Sunday we stopped on our way home at Mount Bruce wildlife preserve. Here teams of people actually raise rare species: get eggs from the wild, raise them to a more defensible age/weight, then release at various places around the country trying to reintroduce native species. We spent far more time here than we intended. It was more meaningful after Kapiti. And the Kaka are pretty amusing in their halfway house. Released on the mountain, but there are regular feedings that they can return to and they do.