Whanganui and Goat Island

In Whanganui the following day, we opted to check out the Kiwi House. It is a museum/gallery situated on a historical piece of property that has several other interesting structures such the first women’s prison (looked like an outhouse), and an old homestead. The Kiwi House itself – has a Kiwi (who would have thought?) However, we were quite disappointed to not be able to see the Kiwi. The lights in the viewing area are very dim, because they are nocturnal and light hurts their eyes. The fellow did not make an appearance the three times we walked through. In the meantime, we walked around the property, saw some peacocks, some baby chickens and of course, the other historical buildings. It was OK, but we were sad not to get to meet the Kiwi.

Here is Marian in a historical women's prison:


Here is a friendly Pukeko at the closed Bird Recovery Center:


And finally here is the peacock who is the guardian of the toilets


On our way South, we stopped off at one of the wineries. We can’t remember which one, but we do remember we didn’t care for it much. We will stick with wines from the Hawkes Bay/Martinborough/Blenheim region, I think. Then we saw Goat Island Marine Reserve. If the day had been a little clearer or warmer, we would have snorkeled here. Marian first read about Goat Island in a National Geographic article years ago. It was one of the first established marine protected parks in the entire world. See article here:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/04/new-zealand-coast/warne-text


So naturally, after reading this article, I was quite excited to see the reserve in person. Although we couldn’t go it, we went up to the rocks edges and could see fish swimming everywhere – pretty exciting. Here is a snapper we saw that the lady next to us estimated was about 50 years old.



Here are some other picture of Goat Island:


Here are some pictures of the coast:




On our way back through Auckland, we stopped in at Lois and Steves’ just to see if we could bug them. Who answered the door? Not Lois, not Steve, but Marissa Rosati! She and her family were visiting for 2 months! It was great to see someone from back home and Marissa was excited to be back in NZ where she spent some time several years ago (she is the Websters’ niece). We also saw Maggie, our Italian friend again. It was a nice chit chat and we sent the Websters our regards through Marissa, who informed us that they were out of town for the evening at a wedding.

We then drove further to Coromandel.