Tag Archives: Travel

Tongariro! (IYKYK)

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Sunday 22 February 2026 – Warning! Long Post Alert!

We left the Reef Resort in good order with nothing but a leisurely journey in front of us. Jane had mined Google Maps for some Things To See on the way and it was nice to be able to take our time at the various viewpoints (they’re called Lookouts over here).

The first one was at Hatepe Esplanade Reserve, which sounds grand but was really a tiny cul-de-sac off State Highway 1, down by the side of Lake Taupō. It offered a better view of Motutaiko Island, the Sacred Island that we’d glimpsed on yesterday’s cruise.

The reason it’s a sacred place to the Māori is that Rangituamatotoru, major chief of the Ngāti Tūwharetoa tribe during the 18th century, is buried here. A cave on the island is supposed to be the home of the taniwha Horomatangi, a supernatural being from Māori mythology.

As we wended our way southwards through the hills in the area, we exchanged one big lake for two smaller ones; Lake Rotopounamu is the smaller of the pair, but we never really got a sight of it. However next to it is Rotoaira, for which there was a lookout.

It’s the caldera of a volcano, as is the case with many of the lakes hereabouts, even Taupō. The primary event causing that huge lake was a massive super-eruption, the Ōruanui eruption, some 25,500 years ago. This was one of the two largest volcanic events on the the planet, spreading a blanket of ash and ignimbrite not only over New Zealand, but also over the Antarctic ice.

The State Highway had a few places to stop and gawp, many of which were formally signposted and provided with parking.

A valedictory lookout north to Lake Taupō over the Tongariro River

We also found lookouts that showed Mount Tongariro (more of which later)

and Ruapehu, the next one along, which is tall enough to have snow on it, even now (late summer/early autumn). Google Maps says that there is a skifield on it; the impression we got from skipper Jimmy is that skiing seasons are getting shorter and shorter on the North Island.

The Mahuia Rapids provided an attractive setting,

as did the Tawhai Falls.

The pool that the falls empty into is known as “Gollum’s Pool”, as it was used for the “Forbidden Pool” scene, in which Faramir and his archers are watching Gollum fish in “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers”. It’s quite impressive.

Our accommodation was the Plateau Lodge, at Waimarino in the Tongariro National Park. We had one of their “King Pod” cabins, which are competently accoutred; not luxurious, but very well-organised.

They even have an external bath!

which we decided might well come in handy in due course. Stay with me for why.

The time was around 1pm by this stage, so we made the necessary phone call to confirm tomorrow’s activity and then went for a walk. Obviously. The main objective was to get to a local store to buy provisions for breakfast for the two mornings we’d be here; the secondary objective was to investigate eateries. Evelyn, the lovely lady who checked us in (having given us a bit of scare when at first she couldn’t find a booking for us), recommended the Schnapps Bar just down the road, so we headed that way, via a local store and a chat with the lady running an optimistically-named coffee stop

who dispensed coffee and some tips about our activity for the morrow.

The Schnapps Bar is just behind a rather dramatic sculpture of a kiwi

and, since it was open

we looked in and had a drink.

It looked like a decent place for a bite later, despite some of the less healthy items on the menu

Cheesy Bacon Garlic Bread? Beer-Battered Fries? Poutine?

and indeed we did call back a bit later. The food was very tasty and the portions gargantuan, but that set us up for a quiet evening to relax and prepare for the morrow.

For it was on the morrow (that’s yesterday, now, 21 Feb) that we had what was certainly the biggest adventure of the trip so far, and possibly of the whole thing, although we’re not going to know for another four weeks about that. The Adventure was a hike, but not just any old hike, in fact quite a chunky one. In the weeks leading up to our departure, Jane had persuaded herself that it was too ambitious for her and that she would seek something less arduous. For my part, I was gung-ho, sure that it would be something I could cope with.

Then, only about 24 hours before the scheduled start, our attitudes reversed; Jane decided that she would give it a go, whereas I was increasingly uncertain as to whether I would make a fool of myself. In the end, we decided that We Would Both Do It and to hell with uncertainty and cowardice.

The hike is the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. Like the Camino de Santiago, it’s a well-known route among the people that do this sort of thing. If You Know, You Know.

The Camino is a multi-day or multi-week endeavour; the Tongariro crossing is done in a single day, but it’s quite a strenuous hike – 20km, 800m ascent, recommended time at least seven hours. We managed the Camino OK, but that was two and a half years ago, we were younger and had practiced in preparation. For today? Not so much. Also, my knees had been occasionally giving me gip and there is one section of the Tongariro Crossing called “The Devil’s Staircase” – a 300-metre ascent in just one km, with the bulk of the ascent being up actual steps; that was what was worrying me. Also, the weather had been looking a bit cloudy and windy, which would make the high section anything from unpleasant to downright perilous. In the end, the lovely Evelyn, who’d checked us in to Plateau Lodge, convinced us that the weather outlook was good and that we’d be OK, so reinforcing our decision to go for it.

We weren’t foolish enough to undertake such a potentially dangerous crossing by ourselves; we were booked on to a guided tour with Adrift Outdoors, who specialised in guiding mad, impetuous fools hikers on the route. So we checked in at their offices, which were just down the road from our accommodation.

Nice people were there to check us in, check our gear over and make sure that we signed our own death warrant a waiver form. These formalities had to be completed for us and the dozen others who would be part of our group: two other Brits, two Dutch, two Germans, two Americans, two Brazilians, an Iranian-born lady (called Paris – go figure) and an Indian chap. I would guess that we were the oldest and that the Indian chap, Ara, was the youngest. He was certainly the fittest, since he did lots of hiking around Zurich where he was currently living.

We all hopped in the bus to take us to the official start point of the crossing, about half an hour away. On the way over, we got a lovely clear view of Mount Ruapehu, Tongariro’s neighbour, the top of which had been obscured by cloud yesterday. Seeing this made us sanguine that perhaps the weather would indeed be clearer than yesterday.

The group had two guides: a lovely young lass called Cami, who briefed us by the entrance to the walk, in front of a pou whenua, a traditional Māori carved post representing Te Ririo, a guardian of those walking the crossing. She talked about the symbolic meaning of parts of the carving, which encourage respect on the part of people on the mountain.

Our other guide was Simon,

who looked every bit the part of a seasoned guide. Both of them were full of useful information about what we were seeing as we went along. Cami, particularly, was capable of talking non-stop while yomping up the steepest slope. Ah! What it is to be young and fit!

So, off we went.

Simon explained that it used to be 19.4km, but a volcanic eruption in 2012 destroyed a hut on the route and caused a diversion to be put in place, this making it a little longer. More of that later.

The first few kilometres of the hike are a gentle climb along a well-defined path.

After about 3km, one reaches the first toilet stop,

which inevitably has queues of people who should have gone back at the start when the loos were a bit more civilised. Beside the track, among the native grasses, is heather

introduced from Scotland, and now becoming, like so many introduced species, something of a pest, as it rather likes the conditions. Some of the initial track is boardwalk

and leads past Mount Ngauruhoe,

which has an illustrious film career, having starred as Mount Fiji in one of the Mission Impossible films, and as Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings series.

The easy part of the walk ends at a place called Soda Springs,

named for the water that wells out of the mountain at this point. This is about 5km in, and there are several toilets available, so it’s a convenient place for a breather.

There’s an interesting parallel with the Camino de Santiago here. On the Camino, it’s common to encounter the same people at many stages along the way; some people even develop a “Camino Family” of familiar faces as they go.  The chap sitting front right in this photo was nothing to do with our group, but we encountered each other several times during the rest of the day. There were other hikers for whom this was also the case. A notice in the loo confirms that the easy part of the day is behind you.

Moving on, the next section is the start of the dreaded “Devil’s Staircase”.

After a short stretch of it, to give you a feel of what is to come, there’s a kind of decision point,

where common sense or formal guides might suggest, gently or otherwise depending on individuals, that going back is more sensible than going forward. Cami and Simon decided that we were all up for going forward, though I heard Simon quietly saying to Cami that it might be worth trying to get the Brazilian couple at the front to keep them up to speed, as they seemed to be hanging at the back of the group.

As warned by the signs, it got tougher,

with the compensation of some splendid views back along the track.

Eventually, we got to what looked like we might be within reach of the top.

The view of Mount Doom changes a bit – one can easily make out deposits of iron ore towards the summit.

There are more toilets at the top of the Devil’s Staircase,

which bear some bad news.

You’ve made it to South Crater, but your hard work is not over yet! You can see the next section of the climb in the distance.

If you look carefully, you can see some ants crawling up. They’re actually people.

Before you take this on, you have to cross the floor of South Crater, which looks like (and quite possibly is) a desert.

At the far side of the desert is another stern warning.

The next section  is even tougher than the Devil’s Staircase, over rocky ground, exposed and with quite substantial gusts of wind.  Even on a beautiful, clear day such as we were blessed with, care was needed, and Cami was at pains to suggest that we should keep an eye on the footing, rather than looking round for photos. By and large I followed her guidance, but I did sneak a couple of shots back over the South Crater desert.

So, you breast this slope triumphantly and….

guess what – there’s more to come! The view from this point is pretty sensational

and it was clear that the effort of the climb thus far caused Jane to take leave of her senses. She had a selfie!

We pressed on to what, really, was going to be the highest point of the hike. And…

Wow! The Red Crater. After all the effort to get there, seeing this makes a real impact. The view of it actually improves as you move on.

and at the very highest point, there’s a cairn,

which I christened “Yes, We Cairn”.

The route from this point is downhill.  Really, really, downhill, down a steep slope of loose scree.

It’s actually very difficult to convey in a photograph what this section is like. Jane had been dreading it, as she is uncomfortable on scree when it is loose stones over rock and very skiddy. But here the loose stones were quite deep and it actually it turned out not to be quite as difficult as she’d feared.  It’s steep, and you have to take it carefully and be prepared to skid a bit; and it’s the part of the hike where most accidents happen, unsurprisingly, but we all made it down OK. I saw a couple of people fall, but not seriously. Again, we were really lucky with the weather; doing this section in rain, high wind or cloud would have been a significantly more challenging proposition.

As you go down you get a fabulous view of the next landmark,

the Emerald Lakes. This was to be our lunch stop, so we had about 30 minutes resting here and eating the packed lunch that Plateau Lodge had prepared for us. Much of this was also spent waiting for the Brazilian couple who were annoying our guides by insisting on hanging back and taking loads of photos. The German couple, unimpressed by the delay, forged on ahead without telling our guides; we eventually met up with them much later along the route, but more time was wasted looking for them before we left Emerald Lakes!

Jane took a photo of the scree slope we’d just come down, in an attempt to convey what it was like.

It gives you some idea, and I also tried from a bit further away. This is photo from quite some way away.

If you look carefully, you can see that there are people going down the slope (actually, some idiots are going up as well!).

Now look even closer…

To get to the point where I took this photo was quite a straightforward walk along the track from the Emerald Lakes.

There’s a climb at the far end – not particularly welcome, it has to be said, but not too brutally steep – which takes you to a view over the Blue Lake

where there are some toilets, with their ever-useful summary of progress.

Halfway, then. The next part is downhill so it must be the easy bit, surely?

Erm, nope.

The track starts off a gentle downhill, and offers great views over Lakes Rotoairo and, in the distance, Taupō

and one can also see Lake Otamangakau.

The views are the only consolation for what turns into a horrendous drudgery of a walk down.  It starts off as a gentle downhill gravel track and one thinks, “ah, this is fine”. But then comes what turns into the hardest part of the day: the downhill steps that punctuate the path at frequent intervals. It’s often said that the downhill part of the Tongariro crossing is the hardest, and people nod knowingly, because, yes, going down can be tough on thighs and knees. No-one mentioned the bloody steps! If it’s the Devil’s Staircase on the way up past Mount Doom, then it Sauron’s Revenge on the way down. The thing is that the descent is 1100 metres vertical, whereas the ascent is 800, so you’re going down far longer than you came up.

There’s a breakpoint by some toilets, near which one can see evidence of volcanic activity.

These toilets are new, and replace the last ones, which were destroyed by a boulder ejected from the last eruption, which was in 2012. Much of the ground is not safe to go near, hence rerouting the path, which is longer, more meandering and has more fucking steps in it.

There’s only one thing worse, after several kilometres of going downhill over loads of steps, and that is

reaching a stretch where there are some uphill steps as well. I found this (relatively short, it must be said) uphill stretch really, really hard. And then the downhill carried on, as the landscape changed and became increasingly foresty.

But still with the goddamn steps, both down

and up.

Jane found this final stretch really hard, and was genuinely worried that her knees were going to buckle under her. But we kept grinding on, and eventually – hurrah! – emerged at the end of the track,

where we found others in our group sitting in a kind of stunned silence, overcome with the enormity of the downhill torture.

And that was it – some nine hours after we started, we climbed into the Adrift bus to take us back to their offices.

I’m glad that our King Pod at Plateau Lodge was on the ground floor. I don’t think I could have managed a staircase, if my life had depended on it.

When I was trying to find out, a year ago as we were planning this trip, how tough the Tongariro crossing was, I sought to compare it with Day 1 of the Camino, which is, I think, the toughest day’s walking I’d experienced. The figures would have you believe that the Camino is tougher: 1,400 metres ascent for the Camino vs 800 for Tongariro; 25 kilometres vs 20; 2,900 calories expended vs 2,600; 39,000 steps vs 31,000. And I remember having trouble with the stairs at Roncesvalles on the Camino; but I think the extra 300 metres of descent down those benighted steps is what marks the Tongariro crossing out as being probably the most difficult day’s walking Jane and I have done.

However, did it we did! And we got the satisfaction of that, and the fantastic views as we went. We were incredibly lucky with the weather, which was perfect all day, and the nectar of the Gods has nothing on the mug of Twining’s Finest Earl Grey when we got back to our accommodation.

We had the one more night at Plateau Lodge and the next stage of our trip is to get to Napier, a journey and destination that we were looking forward to. Stay with these pages to find out how it went.

Taupō – a lake larger than Singapore

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Thursday 19 February 2026 – Our task yesterday was to get the short distance from Rotorua to Taupō – about an hour’s drive – but first I had an astounding discovery to make. I’m not sure I was emotionally prepared for this sight at the breakfast buffet.

Could this really be Marmite?

The answer is – well yes, but not really any more.

Marmite started out in Britain, but the Sanitarium Health and Wellbeing Company obtained the rights to distribute, and later manufacture, Marmite in Australasia. Over time the recipe has diverged from the (proper) British version, manufactured nowadays by Unilever. Sanitarium Health and Wellbeing Company distribute it in Australia as well, but I never saw it on offer there; presumably the Vegemite Marketing Board actively seek to discourage it from ever actually being sold.

Does it taste like proper Marmite? Again, no, not really. I think it’s more similar in taste to Vegemite, with slightly fruity overtones. It still goes nicely with butter on toast, though.

So I learned a thing yesterday. O! How travel broadens the mind!

En route to Taupō there were a couple of things to see, the first of which was as a result of a tip from the friendly boatman at Orakei Korako; on learning of my happiness that there was boiling mud there he suggested we take a look at the Waiotapu Mud Pool. It being just off the route from Rotorua to Taupo, we did exactly that. It’s quite informally presented – just this pool beside the road with a little bit of parking for passers-by. But as a boiling mud offering, it’s definitely very classy.

There’s a side path to a higher viewpoint, too.

It has a couple of small mud volcanoes

and lots and lots and lots of bubbling, seething mud. It was fun trying to capture a sequence of shots of an eruption.

There’s something quite hypnotic about watching boiling mud. One gets quite nerdish about trying to predict when one particular patch is about to erupt into some violent upheaval.

The road we were travelling towards Taupō is rather dramatically called the Thermal Explorer Highway, though officially it has the prosaic name of State Highway 5. Anyway, evidence of geothermal activity can be spied as one drives along.

I’d been hoping that this was another geothermal park, but we think that it is actually a (geothermal) power station; less romantic but a great deal more practical.

The other thing to see on the road to Taupō is the Huka Falls. Despite the name, this is not any kind of waterfall that, say, an Icelander would recognise, but it’s an impressive water feature that may well still cause him to stroke his chin. It’s a cataract caused by a significant narrowing of the channel running between two wider bodies of water. I guess it would be impressive enough anyway, but the colour of the water as it gushes through the channel is beautiful.

We stopped off first at a lookout over the scene.

and then went down to examine it more closely.

It’s difficult to capture photographically in its entirety; video does it slightly better justice.

By this stage we were on the outskirts of Taupō town, and it was a short drive to our accommodation, the Reef Resort. The word “Resort” somehow conjures up images of a significant property laden with palm-fringed swimming pools, restaurants, maybe even a golf course or two. The Reef Resort is not like that. It’s perfectly comfortable, but is small and just a little bit old-fashioned and dowdy in its decor and facilities. It has a swimming pool, which is not of interest to me, and a guest laundry, which is. Therefore, on arrival, apart from a mug of Twining’s Finest Earl Grey, my first task was to do the laundry. Well, these things are important, you know. Our next task was to get into Taupō town to (a) ensure we knew where to go to board the cruise in plan for the next day and (b) find a Woollies in order to buy ourselves some dinner; we’ve been short on vegetables these last few days, and when you get to our age these things matter. Driving around, the town had given us the feeling that it was rather like an American seaside resort; walking from the harbour to the shopping centre reinforced that impression. There were no pedestrian crossings to get across a busy four-lane road which had constant traffic and we had to dice with death when dashing across. Anyway, a successful turn around Woolworth’s ensured that we returned laden with fruit and salad and settled in for the rest of the day.

And so ended yesterday.

Today’s activity was a cruise on the lake. Not just any old cruise, you understand, but one with a specific objective beyond showing us the general scenery from the water; some “Māori carvings”. Our cruise was on a catamaran run by Chris Jolly Outdoors, and we certainly hoped that the outdoors would be jolly today. Looking out over the lake from our accommodation, it seemed a bit windy, and in fact the cruise organisers were giving people an opportunity to book at a later date as today’s conditions might not allow for getting as close to the carvings as would be possible on a calmer day. We decided to stick with it (mainly on the basis that we were moving on tomorrow, but also on the basis that I had a decent, though not Big, lens on the Nikon).

The skipper, Jimmy, gave us the usual safety briefing

part of which was explaining the thing about the wind and the concomitant necessity of hanging on to the boat when moving about. As you can see, there was coffee and tea available, and I was a little surprised that they were just free standing there. Which they weren’t after a bit – with only a small amount of stuff crashing to the floor, they were cleared out of the way when the going got a bit rough.

Jimmy then drove and commentated as we went,

pointing out various features, such as the desirable residential area of Acacia Bay

and Motutaiko or Te-Motu-tapu-a-Tinirau,

the “Sacred Island”, which has a deep cultural significance for Māori people; visiting is forbidden except with explicit permission. Behind it, in the distance to the south of the lake, is Mount Tongariro, of which you might be hearing a lot more in coming days. Or not. You’ll have to keep checking in to find out. Another thing I learned from his commentary is the correct pronunciation of Taupō, which sounds more like “Toe paw”.

We motored around the headland to Mine Bay and the Māori carvings that were the principal object of the cruise, and which are only accessible on the water. Having not really thought much about it, I had expected the carvings to be some kind of historic work by Māori ancestors. Very wrongly, as it turns out. The carvings were created in the 1970s by Matahi Whakataka-Brightwell, a master carver with deep roots in Māori heritage, honouring Māori ancestral legacies.

The central carving, 14 meters high, depicts the legendary navigator Ngātoroirangi, a revered navigator who guided the Tūwharetoa and Te Arawa tribes to the Taupō region over a millennium ago. The artworks depict not only his legacy but also tupuna (ancestors) and kaitiaki (guardians).

Some care was needed when trying to photograph these carvings.

The conditions weren’t ideal, but people managed to get the photos they needed, I think.

If you want to know more about how the carvings were done, you can find it on this YouTube video.

We then headed back around the headland, and Jimmy pointed out various neighbourhoods and other landmarks as we passed them. I took a photo of the area where our accommodation is;

it’s just to the left of the white boxy structure by the lakeside. Just thought you’d like to know. Also visible is a mountain range called the “Sleeping Warrior”

(with a bit of imagination you can see a head and a nose to the right, and the rest of the body in the centre), and Mount Tauhara,

just to the east of Taupō town, which can be climbed by keen beans with the right footwear.

Jane spotted someone parasailing

and, as we approached Taupō,

we saw some kayakers.

Unsurprisingly, Taupō is a great place for people into watersports and water-based activities. There’s not much else here, though.

After disembarking, and acting on a tip from Jimmy, we headed into the desirable Acacia Bay area, aiming to get to a cafe called Cafe L’Arte (L’Arte, Latte, geddit?) which sounded an interesting place to get some coffee. It’s a few kilometres around the lake from Taupō town on a side road, and you get a sense of what the place is like from the signpost that takes you on to that road.

When you get to its turning, you get a further idea,

and walking through from the car park completes the picture.

It’s quite the first impression – like something out of Gaudi’s Park Güell.

It’s also very popular. I don’t know if all the cruiser skippers recommend the place, but it had the air of having several post-cruise punters all arriving at the same time.

It’s a delightful place – good coffee, good food and absolutely dripping with colourful art.

A picture of the counter underneath the counter

There’s a gallery and shop

and it’s altogether a lovely place to spend a little time mooching around.

After our lunch, we headed back to our accommodation. Since we’re not much into watersports or lounging on the beach, there wasn’t anything else for Taupō to offer us, so we took it easy for the rest of the day.

The morrow takes us south to a possible adventure, depending on the weather and our courage. I’m being deliberately cryptic here; you’ll have to stay tuned to see how things get decoded.

Kiwi bono?

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Tuesday 17 February 2026 – Apart from the Haka and Brendan McCullum, what New Zealand is best known for is the Kiwi, in all the various connotations of that word – an adjective to describe its inhabitants or its Rugby League team, a brand name for shoe polish (actually developed by an Aussie, but his wife was a New Zealander), a fruit… or the species of the country’s, possibly the world’s, oddest bird. Today we went to the National Kiwi Hatchery to learn more.

I had actually seen Kiwis before, on my last trip to New Zealand, in 1988. I was culturally backward in 1988, but even in those days I knew that Kiwis came from New Zealand, and somehow or other (there was no Google in those days) I found a place then where one could view the birds, in captivity of course, as they’re very difficult to see in the wild, being (a) shy and (b) nocturnal. The place operated 12 hours out of sync with actual time, so that daytime visitors entered a darkened environment in order to see the birds active. I have a clear memory of seeing at least one Kiwi, and possibly even photographing it, but that was nearly forty years ago, my memory has a habit of inventing things and I have no way of finding out if this is true until I get home and can look at the photos from that time. If I can remember where I put them.

So…today, then.

Jane had cleverly averted a major sulk on my part by ensuring I knew in advance that any sort of photography of the birds was not permitted. Kiwis are easily upset by unexpected light and noise, and I (grumpily) accepted that the centre had to be careful because most people (a) use phones, which emit a lot of light and (b) almost certainly have no idea about whether its flash will fire or not, therefore can’t be trusted. Armed with that foreknowledge, off we went.

The first challenge was finding the place. We had an address, but that turned out to be some kind of Māori-themed tourist trap. In the end, Google Maps gave us the place to find, the intriguingly-named Agrodome, which is not a Mad Max style cage fight but is actually a place themed around a family day out on the farm.

The Aardman theme continues once one gets there.

It’s actually quite the operation, running farm tours around what is quite a large area.

They have a variety of livestock, including sheep, goats and cattle. Sheep are their main focus; the gift shop and cafe is housed in the Woollen Mill, where they have an old carding machine

alongside the sales of Pure New Zealand wool in the shop.

They have a pig,

a Kunekune pig (“Kunekune” means “fat and round” in Māori). They also have an ostrich

which has many similarities to a Kiwi – flightless, grumpy and with very strong legs.

This similarity was pointed out on the guided tour that the National Hatchery operates. One is picked up at the Agrodome and taken by minibus to the hatchery centre.

The lass who drove our van was also our guide for our trip

and she did a very good job of explaining about the bird, its environment, its challenges and the role of the hatchery. She also emphasised that photography of the birds would not be permitted before leading us through to where they keep a few (currently three) kiwis in the same inverted time that I saw thirty eight years ago, switching day and night.  As it turns out, it was so dark in there that any sensible photography was simply not feasible anyway, so I didn’t miss out on a photo opportunity.

So: the Kiwi, then. It’s a weird, weird creature.

  • Its feathers are more like hair
  • It has whiskers like a cat
  • In many ways it’s more like a mammal. It has two ovaries; a low body temperature of about 38°C; and marrow in its bones (flighted birds’ bones are honeycombed and hollow to save weight)
  • It is very heavy, which is not a problem because it is flightless. Our guide passed around a couple of fluffy model Kiwis made to weigh the same as a chick and an adult and it was a real surprise: the adult female weighs around 3kg

It is thought to be the world’s most ancient bird, having evolved some 30 million years ago. It developed, of course, with no mammalian predators at all (only avian ones, like hawks or crows), so introduced animals such as ferrets and stoats have wrought much damage to the Kiwi population, and predate Kiwi chicks (though an adult will give a stoat a good kicking, apparently). Even hedgehogs are their enemies, since a hedgehog is not above making a nice proteinaceous meal out of a Kiwi egg.

Ah, yes. The eggs. They are enormous, compared with the bird in which they develop.

Somehow or other, a female Kiwi can develop an egg like that in about a week. An X-ray gives an extraordinary picture.

One wonders how uncomfortable it is for the poor bird to deliver it, but somehow she does, and she delivers it into the care of the male (with whom she is likely bonded monogamously). Then, because she hasn’t had anything to eat for a week because of the size of the egg, she goes off to find food, developing the while a second egg (from her other ovary), which she then also delivers into the male’s care. That is then her job done; she has no further interest in eggs or chicks at all.  The bloke Kiwi has to incubate these eggs for 80 days before they hatch. When they do, the chicks are basically fully-formed Kiwis who need no teaching about how to feed themselves, which is just as well, since the male makes no effort to teach them anything.

There are actually five types of Kiwi; the North Island has mainly Brown Kiwis, about 25,000 of them. The other types are: Rowi Kiwi, about the same size as a Brown Kiwi, but a greyer colour, and critically endangered with around 500 birds at the moment; Great Spotted Kiwi, the largest and toughest, spotted only on the South Island; Little Spotted Kiwi, which is, erm, small, and exists almost entirely in remote island colonies; and Tokoeka Kiwi, the Southern Brown Kiwi, which we might get to see later on this trip as it is not entirely nocturnal.

Unsurprisingly there were some stuffed kiwis for us to look at.  A male

The red tag is to allow tracking. If it’s not moving, it’s incubating an egg, which can be brought to the hatchery

and a female

To be absolutely certain in distinguishing one sex from the other it is necessary to analyse their DNA, but typically males are smaller and skinnier, and females larger and rounder. One can see their whiskers

and (if one looks very carefully) their nostrils, which are at the end of their bills, making them officially the birds with the shortest beaks in the world. It is possible to make a coat out of their feathers

and this would be for extremely high-ranking Māori. It takes a lot of birds to make a coat like that, and, these days, the species is under threat.  The National Hatchery exists to try to increase the chances of survival of Kiwi eggs. There are about 68,000 Kiwi left in all of New Zealand and the nation is losing 2% of its unmanaged Kiwi every year. The Brown Kiwi population is steadily declining by about 1-2% a year. Without ongoing support, experts estimate it will be extinct in the wild within two generations: only 50% of Kiwi eggs in the wild hatch; of those that do, only 5% of the resulting chicks survive to adulthood. The centre has overseen the successful hatching of nearly 3,000 eggs since it came into operation some 20 years ago.

The final part of our tour was to see the support the centre gives for hatching chicks. Eggs are located using a variety of tactics, such as tagging the males – if they’re stationary, they’re likely incubating – to locate eggs and bring them to the hatchery. They are carefully incubated, the chicks are microchipped, checked for health, measured and fed to bring them to the point where they are heavy and strong enough to withstand a stoat and so can be released back into the wild; they are then set free in the same region that the egg was found. This is not traumatic for either the male or the chick, since the former doesn’t care for the latter and the latter is pretty much ready for the wild and hasn’t imprinted at all on people during its time in the hatchery.  It’s a funny old business, but deeply interesting to learn about what they do and to find out how extraordinarily weird these creatures are.

That was our scheduled activity for the day. Rather than relaxing for the rest of it, Jane (of course) found Something Interesting To Do in the evening. That will be the subject of the next post. Heads-up – there will be a certain amount of photographic nerdery in it as well as some pretty pictures.