Birds and caves
17 Saturday February 2007 Filed in: Travel
Otorohanga was our
next stop. New Zealand has been Maori for a 1000
year and that has infuenced the names on places
alot. Its rather hard to remember all the names
when Maori language inst your first language.
Most places starts eith W ot K, like Waikiki,
Wangarei, Kiakia etc.
This town was called Otorohanga anyway, it had a little bird zoo that displayed som of the rare NZ birds, especially the Kiwi which is a national symbol. Actualy all New Zealanders are called kiwis. The Kiwis (the birds I mean) is a night working bird so they where kept in a house with only a weak lamp. We had to use nightshot on the camera to get it on the picture. Actually I thought I saw 2 of them the second day we where in Orewa. We drow by a big field in the evening and there was two live once at maybe 50-100 meters distance.
The other attraction we visit this day was the glowworm caves just south of where we had slept. We visited two caves, Aranui and te Waitomo, the first where up in a mountain and the other was down in the mountain with a river floating in it. Because of the river the glowworms where hunting insects that cam with the river and where lost in the dark. The worms pulld out some strings that the insects where traped in. They used the light they emitted to attracts the lost insects. What a cruel world.
After the caves we took a stroll into the jungle and up a hill. When we came out of the wood there was a typically english farm landscape. Strange. NZ har a nature that is so tight, you see ordinary trees, pines an such, just next to some palmtrees and all these parasite veggies is growing around the other trees. But you also see fields with grass like it was at home in Sweden, its rather confusing for me.
This town was called Otorohanga anyway, it had a little bird zoo that displayed som of the rare NZ birds, especially the Kiwi which is a national symbol. Actualy all New Zealanders are called kiwis. The Kiwis (the birds I mean) is a night working bird so they where kept in a house with only a weak lamp. We had to use nightshot on the camera to get it on the picture. Actually I thought I saw 2 of them the second day we where in Orewa. We drow by a big field in the evening and there was two live once at maybe 50-100 meters distance.
The other attraction we visit this day was the glowworm caves just south of where we had slept. We visited two caves, Aranui and te Waitomo, the first where up in a mountain and the other was down in the mountain with a river floating in it. Because of the river the glowworms where hunting insects that cam with the river and where lost in the dark. The worms pulld out some strings that the insects where traped in. They used the light they emitted to attracts the lost insects. What a cruel world.
After the caves we took a stroll into the jungle and up a hill. When we came out of the wood there was a typically english farm landscape. Strange. NZ har a nature that is so tight, you see ordinary trees, pines an such, just next to some palmtrees and all these parasite veggies is growing around the other trees. But you also see fields with grass like it was at home in Sweden, its rather confusing for me.
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