Livermore New Zealand: Otorohanga-Kawhia Kiwis and Falls Saturday December 24th

Otorohanga-Kawhia Kiwis and Falls

Saturday December 24th

Today we ate breakfast and then went to the local park, Kuirau Park. It is only a few feet from our current B & B, the Kirau Lodge. It has a ton of thermal activity with bubbling mud pits, colorful steaming lakes, and cool vegetation. The kids enjoyed throwing sticks in the lake and having it bubble up all around it. Even the storm drains around the park were steaming.

Thermal activity of Kuirua park.

Steaming water with lots of color.

Manuka flowers-NZ honey from Manuka flowers is wonderful and actually very good for you.

We then hit the road and drove to Otorohanga. The kids will miss the hot springs pool and the owners excellent dog-it never barks and is actually helpful. On our way we passed the coolest town, Tirau-it had then neatest downtown. A lot of the downtown stores had characters on top or were shaped like them. The terrain was beautiful, rolling hills/mountains and lots of farm land stuck in between lush forest. There were a lot of rocks and it reminded me of a cross between Pennsylvania and Ireland.

Tirau.

After driving for one hour and forty-five minutes we made it to Otorohanga. Our goal was the Kiwi House and Native Bird Park. We had seen the brown kiwi (there are three types) at the Rainbow Springs park. Here they had the great spotted kiwi. Since kiwi birds are nocturnal, they have set up special lights that allow you to see the birds in a glass enclosure where they think it is night. We were the only ones there and we saw how the kiwi use their very long and slender beaks to feed. They jam them into the dirt in search of insects to eat. We were able to enjoy them for almost a half of an hour with no one else around. There are no pictures allowed of kiwi birds-even without flash.

We saw the only native owl, the morepork., the karearea-the NZ falcon, the NZ parrots-kaka and kea. The kea are deemed the smartest birds on the planet and the only ones to use tools and be able to adapt to arctic conditions. After viewing a ton of other native bids we took a walk through the Otorohanga Rotary park. It was very beautiful and a nice thing to do before our picnic lunch that mom had packed.

A taxidermy kiwi.

White kiwi bird egg on the left, ostrich on right. Kiwi birds lay the largest egg relative to their body size of any bird.

Morepork

Some of the ferns of NZ have all their leaves curl and then the whole stem curls, it is prominent symbol in Maori art.

NZ parrot

Silver fern.

We headed to the grocery store in Otorohanga as it is the largest town before our destination of Kawhia. We stocked up for the next four days including Christmas and Gabriel’s Birthday. After stuffing the groceries into any and all available cracks, we headed down the road. It was very twisty and turny once again, but the views were amazing. Kawhia is situated in a sheltered harbor and the black sand beach is beautiful and calm. We have a cabin and there are surprisingly few people here at this cabin/camping site. There is really no other place to stay for a great distance around. The kids immediately headed for the water and made new friends, Dylan and Skyler who joined them out in the water. It was low tide and the kids were able to see lots of sea shells and crabs.

After showering we drove to Bridal Veil Falls. The road had been washed out so we had to drive around on a gravel road and it was quite frightening. There were a lot of one lane spots and sharp turns. The walk to get to the falls was through very dense forest and was lovely. The falls itself was stunning. We got four views, the top, the side, the middle-straight on, and the bottom (complete with rainbows).

After driving back on the hair raising roads, we settled into dinner and then off to bed-which is hard when it is light so late here.