New Zealand, Part 7: Zealandia | A Change of Plans
Day 11: Christchurch to Wellington
No real photography on this day. We went to the Christchurch Botanic Gardens, met Aunt Terry again for lunch, and then flew to the North island. Here’s a few phone photos from around Christchurch.
Day 12: Wellington to Waimarino
Zealandia
Right near Wellington is a unique wildlife sanctuary called Zealandia. It’s a huge open space (over 500 acres), but completely fenced in. The purpose of the fencing is to keep mammals OUT. Their fencing is so good that they don’t even get mice inside the sanctuary.
New Zealand has no endemic mammalian predators, but they have huge problem with invasive mammals like stoats, cats, and possums eating endangered bird eggs. In every National Park we visited, there were posted signs about their efforts to wipe out mammalian predators from the country.
We were lucky this day to see the Kākā, an endangered alpine parrot, both in flight and down in the trees.
The main reason we included the North island in our trip was for the Tongariro Alpine Crossing in Tongariro National Park, a long day hike that’s considered one of the best in the world. It’s a one-way hike with limited parking, so you need to book a shuttle. Our original plan was to do that hike the next day, which is why we were staying nearby in Waimarino this night. Unfortunately, the shuttle service let us know that service would be canceled the next day because of inclement weather.
We thought about just skipping the hike, but the weather looked to clear up in a couple days, so we rebooked the shuttle and some of our accommodations and crossed our fingers for clear skies.
Anyway, here’s some photos from our drive up.
Day 13: Waimarino to Rotorua
So the next day, instead of a big hike, we did a couple shorter hikes in Tongariro to waterfalls.
Huka Falls
This was an incredibly fast moving river that ends in less of a waterfall and more of a projectile vomit. I took a few photos that I like, but this video Molly took gives you an idea of what a 200,000 litre/second flow rate looks like.
