West Coast and Kiwi birds

Kevin and Kerry, kiwi love

Adam loves Kiwis, the birds, not the fruit...he hates the fruit, except for his teddy Kiwi Fruit, Kevin, he bought a couple of years ago in the North Island. He wanted to get a wife for Kevin, so his dream on this holiday was to find Kiwis (and a gift shop that sold teddy versions!)

A Rowi kiwi (photo taken from west coast kiwi centre website)

The West Coast Kiwi Centre is a kiwi sanctuary for a particular type of kiwi called the Rowi kiwi, there are 5 varieties all together. The Rowi are very close to extinction with only 500 left in the world. They are known to lay about 50 eggs in total a year, of which 2/3 are infertile and the other are largely eaten by stoats brought over to NZ in the 1800s to deal with the rabbit problem, so only about 6 per year are known to hatch of which half will be eaten before they are 1. The West Coast kiwi centre is a sanctuary specifically for the Rowi and is managing to successfully hatch double the success rate in the wild.

At the moment they have 2 Rowi babies that are 8 weeks old, but they are way bigger than I imagined, kind of chicken sized already. They are nocturnal so the room was a dark room you needed your eyes to adjust to before you went in, and you cant take pictures as it upsets them. They are quirky and amusing to watch them bumble hop around with the their great big out-of-proportion beaks. Adam has now managed to procure a kiwi teddy, its a kiwi bird called Kerry, hes a happy boy, and I am sure so is Kevin!!

Hokitika beach front

We visited the Punakaiki Rocks, aka Pancake rocks, our way up the west coast. These rocks were just a few miles from our last Bach we will stay in. They are essentially an area where rocks have evolved to look like piles of pancakes...hundreds and hundreds of pancakes. In stacks and cliffs. They are like nothing I have seen before, and they are pretty cool to look at. There is also an area where the roof has caved in from the rough sea and created a blow hole at high tide, we saw a few great waves crashing up through it at mid-tide I imagine at high tide it is pretty impressive.

Hokitika gorge

Hokitika is a pretty little beach town also on the road North. It is famous for its jade greenstone and its huge amount of driftwood on the beach, and its name spelt out in driftwood. We had a picnic by the beach but it was a bit too windy to stay too long, so we went inland about 20 miles to get bitten to pesky sandflies at Hokitika Gorge instead

The gorge is another great little walk managed by the Dept of conservation here. A bit of a steep walk takes you to board walked area of rainforest and brings you out by a swing bridge over the brightest teal water. We have seen every shade of blue water here on this holiday, and this was probably about the brightest. People swim here in this fatter bend of the river, like a pool, in summer but it was flowing pretty fast today. It was a nice little detour on a otherwise fairly long straight drive to the Abel Tasman National Park area, near Nelson on the North East.