We Love...

What’s not to love about New Zealand?

This section aims to introduce you to some of our favourite things! These are not the obvious and not necessarily the iconic, but are more fun, quirky, off-the- beaten track items that we’d like to point out to our visitors. Many of these We love… items make us proud of our New Zealand heritage and we hope they sharpen your desire to meet the people and places of this diverse destination. Enjoy!

Nicci did this walk, one of New Zealand’s greatest, in her late teens, so it is now an indelible and very treasured memory. She remembers the first day’s hike up to the first hut on Panekiri Bluff – and the reward was ‘views to die for’; stunning, thick, native bush, clean rivers (fancy tickling a trout?), secluded bays, peace and tranquillity, sun after rain.

Waikaremoana is a 2000-year-old lake extruded from the earth in a remote south-eastern corner of the Te Urewera National Park, ringed with native forest and resounding with Maori history. It’s a pretty special place. When Nicci and her brother did the walk in the 70s, the bush huts (long drop loos and communal bunk-houses) and tracks, even then, were well-built and maintained by the DOC – Department of Conservation. Today, with new huts and track upgrades, it’s as awesome as ever. But now one is also able to use an outfitter such as Walking Legends, who can organise everything for you, including transfers from and back to, say, Rotorua. One of our hand-picked outfitters, such as Walking Legends, can help put a hike like this together..

Diverse and prolific birdlife is a unique feature of New Zealand’s coastal, forest and alpine environments – even in the major cities, where birdsong frequently interrupts the urban buzz. Birds hold a special place in the folklore of New Zealand Maori, who believed the graceful winged creatures to be messengers from the spirit world. Some species have disappeared, but almost 200 documented bird species – terrestrial, coastal and oceanic -–are found in New Zealand today.

Sanctuaries and conservation reserves throughout the country provide havens for protected bird populations where they are bred and nurtured. While accompanying an old friend around New Zealand early in 2020, John visited the Kiwi Sanctuary at Cape Kidnappers where he had a very special encounter.

“I took these pictures when I went with a lovely Australian ornithologist (that means she works with birds) to release a 3 week old kiwi chick into the Cape Kidnapper’s Sanctuary. A sanctuary means they are kept safe here from predators such as possums, rats, stoats and weasels, which love to eat kiwi eggs. Because of this, they are endangered and nearly extinct, meaning there are very few of them left in the world and that they urgently need help. It is almost impossible for them to survive out of a protected area like this.

In this sanctuary there is a large population of nearly 50 pairs. They are the north island brown kiwi, one of five different species of kiwi found in New Zealand. Kiwi don’t occur anywhere else in the world, so they are what’s called endemic to New Zealand.

You probably know that New Zealanders are sometimes called “kiwis”. Some people (who aren’t from New Zealand) wonder why New Zealanders are named after a flightless (they don’t fly at all), short, chunky, shy bird that only feeds at night and whose voice is more of a loud, not very attractive, cry than a lovely song like a tui. But New Zealanders are very proud to take the name of this little bird.”

(Extract from a letter from John to his grandchildren)

See our Long Sojourn itinerary and visit Zealandia, the world’s first fully- fenced eco sanctuary, located just a few minutes’ drive outside the city centre. More than 140 rare Little Spotted Kiwi live in the sanctuary and they can often be seen on night tours.

This comes from long-haired merino sheep and is soft and warm, rather like cashmere. The best quality merino is widely available in New Zealand and we can point you in the right direction to find the perfect products for you.

Nicci grew up enjoying these – her most memorable and favourites are chocolate fish, pineapple lumps, minties, Whittaker’s peanut slabs, buzz bars and hokey pokey ice-cream in a cone!

 
This lovely little gallery and sculpture garden is close to our hearts because Bruce and Louise are originally from Zimbabwe, John’s homeland – and, with their work, they continue to support the original artistic Birdwood’s community back home in Zimbabwe. Read more about their fascinating story and gallery – www.birdwoodsgallery.co.nz.