Hokitika Day 2

Wonders never cease, because the next morning the sun was shining.  It had started raining while we were at Shantytown and had rained on and off all evening.  The forecast was a solid weekend of rain but we had already booked our cottages so we decided to risk it.  We had been told by one of the guides at Shantytown that the area gets 3 metres of rain per year.  Soggy.

We got up and organized pretty quickly because we had to head for the main reason we came to Hokitika.  To go to the National Kiwi Centre.   We arrived shortly after it opened,  just in time to help feed the eels.  Yum.  Some of the eels here are 120 years old.

The kiwi enclosure is kept in the dark as they are nocturnal creatures and no photography is allowed.  Having said that, one of them was pretty active while we were there and we got to watch her foraging around for about 10 minutes before she went to hide.  Apparently we were pretty lucky to see this much of one of them.  So, courtesy to google and mac screen shots here is a picture of one. 

They are about the size of an average chicken and with no real wings and those little legs you can see why they are endangered.  Their biggest enemies right now are domestic cats and dogs.  Stoats are an issue as well.  All three of these predators are not native to New Zealand and have decimated the Kiwi population. 

After watching all the critters we headed into town and did a little shopping and getting some souvenirs for our friends back home.  

We then took a stroll on the beach,  Adrian and Natasha did a good job of getting wet (chilly) and we all did some rock collecting.  

Then off down the road, we ended up driving all the way back to Greymouth because there are no gas stations between it and Hokitika which meant we had to go (again) on the freakiest bridge I have ever been on.  

Did you figure it out?  The TRAIN tracks run down the middle of the bridge!!!  ACK.  They are in the middle of construction of a new bridge so the cars and trains get to share. Gave me the heebies. 

On our drive back over the pass we had a couple of stops.  One was to help a fellow who got his truck stuck in a riverbed.  Then another truck came along and he got stuck too.  Finally the big deck truck came and got everyone out...

Natasha and I had fun waiting in the van singing Corb Lund's song.  Now the blog has a soundtrack!

So after the good ole boys got hauled out we headed on our way and then had to stop to rescue a hedgehog from getting squished as he was trying to cross the road. 

 According to Adrian his name is Carl. 

The rest of the drive home was fairly uneventful except for Matt deciding to amuse the kids by honking at fields of sheep and making them run away.  That is the problem with sheep, they are very dim and if one starts to run they all do.  Oh well they got their exercise for the day.  All those grass calories and all.