Kapiti 3

Don't make the mistake of thinking that Minnie is an uneducated and unsophisticated person. In fact she's the opposite, as well as being a shrewd business woman and forthright commentator on the ways of the world. However it was her well-spoken grandson, Manaaki who spent most time with the paying guests at the lodge.

Manaaki

Manaaki had met the morning boat and introduced everyone to the island. He was waiting to greet us again when we arrived at the lodge, sat and chatted while we had afternoon drinks and nibbles (there was much excitement when an extremely rare - only a few hundred left - flightless Takehe - yes, the bird we'd been pleased just to get a glimpse of earlier - strolled past the door as we sat there), showed us to our cabin and sat with us again at dinner.

Takehe

Our cabin

The food - prepared by Vicky who'd been the chef for 5 years but was about to depart for a new job, cooking for the crew during the filming of 'The Hobbit' - was unfussy and very good. For dinner there was pea and ham soup, then steak and fish with roasted vegetables and mixed salads, followed by fresh fruit salad, including delicious stewed plums, with cream. It was a case of help yourself to as much as you wanted. Everyone was a little reserved at the first visit to the serving table but soon lost any embarrassment about returning for seconds - and thirds.
By the time we'd finished dinner it was dark. There was a talk about Kiwi, and then we went out into the night to try to see some.
We had not gone more than a few steps from our cabin when we saw Manaaki waving to us. He was standing at the edge of the bush with a torch shining only dull red light. When we reached him he shone this torch towards the spot from which came the sound of some creature turning over the leaf debris. There, in the very dim light, we finally had our first sighting of a Kiwi. But, never satisfied, we wanted to see more.

Kiwi are timid birds and do not see very well. Because they spend the day in burrows their eyes are sensitive to light. They navigate and find their food using their heightened sense of smell.Therefore, when we went looking for them we did our best to move silently and the only light was our guide's red torch.

It was magical being out in the bush in the dark. We could hear the shrill calls of Kiwi and the shrieks and repetitive calls which give the only native New Zealand owl its name ('more pork, more pork'). The moon was coming up and silver light shimmered through the branches of trees. Unidentified birds which had been disturbed by our movement along the narrow tracks clattered up from their roosts and flew away, with the beat of air through feathers, over our heads.

Several times we stopped when we heard a Kiwi creeping through the undergrowth, and waited holding our breath as it grew near to us but when the red light went on there was nothing to be seen. Twice more we succeeded in catching a glimpse of the hunchbacked little bird, its long beak probing the ground, apparently ignorant of our presence but nevertheless moving out of the light and fading into the bush too quickly for me to even think of trying to take a photo.
The guided walk finished at around 11pm, and, although we could have continued looking for Kiwi alone, we had all had enough by then of creeping around in the dark looking for this elusive and very hard to see, bird so everyone went to bed.
The next day after breakfast Lawson and I went for a walk around the north end of the island, getting back to the lodge at lunchtime for another nice meal. Then Lawson had just time to visit the Spoonbill colony again before we were delivered by boat back to New Zealand.