Wellington, New Zealand

Wellington is a delightful city, worth more than our one day stay. Despite other cultural opportunities I chose to go to Zealandia, a predator free park with the ship naturalist and 4 fellow bird crazy passengers. We took the cable car up to the botanical garden and picked up the Zealandia shuttle. We had a leisurely 2 1/2 hour tour. In addition to removing the predators (mice, rats, cats, stouts, rabbits, etc) they are slowly reintroducing original vegetation and removing non native plants. One of the important trees was the Remutree, a slow growing tree the Maori used for canoes. Once the Europeans arrived they cut down all he big trees for lumber. Now only small ones are left.

Besides birds the park has tuatara. It is the only reptile in its family (sphenodon) that survived the dinosaur extinction period. It's name means " peaks on the back."

Bill took the cable car to the Botanical Garden and studied the myriad varieties of roses.

Sadly the ship's captain announced that there was bad weather in the area of Milford and Doubtful Sounds on the tip of the South Island so we would go due west between the two islands toward Australia. Thus we would avoid 20 foot waves that "would make us feel like we were in a washing machine." But we would not see the sounds (termed fjords in our parlance).Read more