When Kaite and her friends left I hoped on a backpacker's bus network called Stray Bus. Mostly students and younger people on holiday (vacation) use this bus system because it is inexpensive and it makes stops along the way to certian desinations. It goes all over New Zealand.
I decided to head further North, where the weather is a bit nicer, to the Bay of Islands for the next day or so until my flight. The busdrivers all have nicknames on Stray and mine was just called #2. So #2, on the way to the Bay of Islands, made 3 stops along the way.
We first stopped at this place where they had these huge trees. They are famous in New Zealand apparantly and he told us the ancient legend behind them. So - this is me hugging the famous tree.
#2 also stopped at Goat Island. The Kiwis (New Zealanders) named their islands after whatever happened to be on that particular island. He said there used to be a bunch of goats here, so they just called it Goat Island.. simple enough. We hopped in the water here, it was freezing, and did some snorkeling before hitting the road again.
Finally, we stopped at place where this guy takes in hurt birds for a while until they are ready to go back into the wild.
The Kiwi bird is the huge thing in New Zealand, it is why the people are called Kiwis. However, the Kiwi is extremely extinct and nobody ever gets to see them. Only a few wildlife parks have them and they are behind glass and expensive to see. There was a New Zealand girl on our Stray bus and she said she had never seen them or knows anybody that has ever seen them...and she has been in NZ her entire life.
Well amazingly enough, this one man has the only lisence in all of NZ to actually keep a Kiwi bird and we were lucky enough to meet him.
This is Sparkey, the 1-legged Kiwi, and #2 sat us down in a circle and the man came and just put him right in the middle of us. Sparkey lost his leg in a trap so this one man takes him around and shows him to elementary schools and nursing homes. We actually got to take pictures with and pet Sparkey, it was really neat and I felt like it was kind of a privaledge.
This is the bird guy with an injured Hawk. I thought it was interesting because he has had no formal training at all with birds, he just has been working with them forever and knows a ton about them! It was pretty neat to watch him pick them up and deal with them.
Finally I got to the Bay of Islands and went to a Moauri Culture show that night. The Mauri people were the first people on the islands and they have tons of heritage and special ceremonies they do. I hadn't learned anything about Mauri culture up until that point, so this show was extremely informative and entertaining.
This is the Bay of Islands.. I tried to get a picture of them. It is basically what it sounds like.. a bunch of little tiny islands that you can go to and snorkle, fish, parasail, kayak, boat around, and just relax on. It was really beautiful. Here are 2 little islands.
Finally, before I hopped back on the bus to catch my flight, I had to get a famous ice cream hamburger that I had been hearing so much about. It was excellent!
And that concludes the trip to New Zealand!
No comments:
Post a Comment