Mark Smalley

Tuesday, 15 Mar - Napier
Saw a couple of rats on the Marine Parade yesterday evening, after ATM'ing $500. One jumped out of a rubbish bin, the other scampered across the road. Rats and possums are NZ's most hated creatures. NZ is short on native mammals, the country having drifted off from the continent millions of years ago before mammals had developed. Its own variety of birds it does have, the small, tubby, flightless and almost blind Kiwi being the most famous, presumably not for its activity as it sleeps for up to 20 hours a day. Some national icon.

A late start takes us into town for a second look around. The Art Deco shop is very attractively stocked and enquipped with a slightly hyper-active Bertie Wooster type doing his “Pip pip” stuff.

We're also in town to find out when high and low tide are today as we're planning to do the walk to the Gannet Colony at Cape Kidnappers. It's a 30 min car drive to Clifton and then a 2 hour walk along the beach, about 9 km. And then back. There are guided tours (www.gannets.com ), travelling on a trailer behind a tractor but at $28 each we'll walk it. The tides are important as you either won't get there or back without getting seriously wet.
We arrive at 1300 and it's pouring down. After eating our sandwich lunch in the car it calms down and at 1315 we chance it. The tide is still on the high side and we occasionally have to negotiate some rocks but it's mostly straight forward beach, with high, crumbly cliffs to our right.
The weather is very changeable: sun followed by light showers, nothing serious but could have done without them.
We see a just couple of other walkers behind us, and later another one - apart from them the beach is ours - and, 15 min before we get to the gannets, we're passed by the tour tractor and trailer with about 20 people on board.
March is migration month for most gannets but there are still a couple of hundred around. Most of them are perched on the rocks but the occasional one strays down to beach level, not being frightened of humans.
The way back takes 1h45m, 15 min shorter than the way out, primarily because there is more sand to walk on and fewer rock-detours. We're back at the carpark at 1745, feeling like we've achieved something special but in fact we've only walked a bit to see some birds.

At the supermarket we get a healthy mix of coleslaw, potato with sour cream, pasta and avocado, olives and some unhealthy wildberry and custard strudel that we don't get around to this evening.

posted by Mark Smalley @ 4:53 PM