After breakfast I pick up the tickets for the Rakiura Track walk from the visitor centre in Main St. Anna sees this sign along the way. I own a Fiat 500, one of the smallest cars on the road, and we are in remote Stewart Island where carparks are plentiful! So funny we all thought.
These are the tickets for our three day walk. We have camping ones as well for four of the youngies. (Anna is in the huts with us.) Cost is $24 per night per adult in each hut, camping $15 per night per person.
The visitor centre has very good information. I enjoyed learning about everything on Stewart Island. This about the mutton bird/sooty shearwater/tītī. Maoris still can hunt and eat it even though it is threatened. It is only the young 'teenage' chicks that taste ok we are told.
There was a video about kiwis. The Stewart Island tokoeka is the largest kiwi. "Widespread in forest, scrub, tussock grasslands and sub alpine zones of the south-western South Island and on Stewart Island. Flightless, with tiny vestigial wings and no tail. Generally nocturnal, therefore more often heard than seen, except on Stewart Island where birds often forage during the day. Male gives a repeated high-pitched ascending whistle, female gives a deeper throaty cry. Brown and dark brown , streaked length ways with reddish brown and black. Feather tips feel soft. Long pale bill, short legs and toes. Voice: Male gives a high-pitched ascending whistle repeated 15-25 times, female gives a slower and lower pitched hoarse guttural call repeated 10-20 times."
"The female lets the male know when they want to mate. The male jumps on top the female and often falls off. The female tells the male when she has had enough." There was a video of this, that I watched. I remember a 6yo (I thought she was 6) watching too. We were both standing at the back of 4 people watching in seats. She kept looking at me and smiling. I wasn't sure whether she thought it was smiling stuff kiwis jumping on top of one another, or whether she had seen it all before and now what did I think? I did think she was focused, and it did endorse to me young people are our kaitiaki of our birds and land for sure.
This was the closest video to it I found on YouTube. This one finishes before the action part though - you'll have to go to Rakiura to see that!
Our trip to see the kiwis got cancelled last night, so we will see them after our tramp on Wednesday night. I have seen them before here, on the beach looking for sand hoppers in seaweed. After that I remember thinking wouldn't it be great if everybody could see this? I could not believe a bird could be so weird and wonderful.
Next for us was a fishing trip with Ant from Tequila Fishing and Bird Watching. (Some of, Ed.) the youngies are excited waiting for the boat.
The boat arrives.
We take up our positions.
We head to Herekopare Island, about a 45min trip, and look for seals. We find one.
Then Ant looks for fish.
He sets up the lines. Today he also has Craig with him.
Aprons on!
Ant shows us how.
Straight away he gets a blue cod.
So we all start to fish.
That's a keeper Mahkaila, just.
Not a keeper Anna, but the biggest one of the day - a shark!
One of Chiara's catches (not sure what it was called?)
Two keepers on one line.
24 blue cod in total!
The albatross were everywhere.
Then in a flash Craig and Chiara saw a great white shark leap out of the water and take a Salvin's albatross. I wish I had seen it.
This was what was left.
There were suddenly no albatrosses or gulls anywhere, they cleared out. We waited for a few minutes for the great white to come back. It didn't. We saw it in the distance with a seal. Craig said it may thought the albatross was a seal, and spat it out when it tasted the feathers. He saw great whites often down there, but he had never seen one take an albatross like that.
We decided we had enough fish, so we packed up the lines and went inside to have the lunch we had brought with us - after the fishing it was especially yummy, and so was the chocolate Lachie, Anna and Chiara had brought.
Ant filleted the fish, while Craig drove the boat.
I filmed the albatross who followed the boat so closely it was unbelievable. They were there for the rest of the fish Ant threw to them.
Then it was home to the South Seas Hotel, where they cooked three of our bags of fish for our dinner. Ant and Craig took some for them and their friends. We had a great meal each, and saved extra cooked fish for lunch for our walk the next day, and the rest (a lot!) was cooked and put on the the bar for the locals.
Then it was the regular Sunday night pub quiz. It was a lot of fun, even though we only came 12th out of 16 teams. One question was how wide are rugby goals - 5.6m, 6.6m or 7.6m? The answer is 5.6m, which we had and then changed to 6.6m. It was a fun night. We could not have won the $60 bar tab as we had 7 in our team and the rule was to have 6.
