Waking up to a down pour, was disheartening. We wanted to spend the day walking around Napier. It is such a cute town, with lots of Art Deco buildings to explore and cool shops. Since our shoes are still drying out from our snow adventure we did not want to get our last dry pair soaked as well. We decided to not stick around and head south toward Wellington.
Hwy 2 to Wellington has been the best road we have driven on! It has been mostly flat, no washouts or hairpin turns. Paul has been a happy driver. The landscape has been a lot of green rolling hills, and some sheep, but not as many. We went through a funny looking town called Dannevirke. This town had cheesy bill boards and cut outs of vikings everywhere! I guess we know where they landed (inland) in NZ!
We stopped along the way looking for a restroom. To our surprise we stopped in the park that filmed one of the scenes from Lord of the Rings, Rivendale. However, we were much more excited about the little parrots we saw. They were brighty colored and looked like mini scarlet macaw, a whole flock flew infront of the van and we stopped to watch them hopping around in the grass! Things are very tropical as far as plant life and animalsin spots. We have felt at times like we are in Central American jungles, but without the humidity!
Wellington looks like a really cool city. We just drove through the Upper Hutt (a suburb) and turning into the lower hutt to get to a DOC campground.
Our camp was very nice and there are Kiwi's around. We hope to see one tonight! We hiked up a trail for about an hour to stretch our legs. It was getting dark so we did not make it to the top. We were the only campers once again! When I was changing into my thermals for the night I heard Paul say "Holy Crap!" I jumped out of the van seeing that he was looking up. I follow his gaze into a large tree. It was a huge white bird! I grabbed the binoculars so we could figure out what kind of bird it was. My guess was an owl. To our surpass it was a Cockatoo. We had know idea that they had huge cockatoo's here. We watched him for awhile, The picture was hard to get, but you can see the yellow crest on his head.
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