New Zealand

Today we visited the Zealandia nature reserve which covers 225 achres in the Wellington suburbs. First built as a dam to supply the city with all of its water needs, they later realised that the area laid directly on the fault line so improvements were needed to prevent the water from crashing down in the event of an earthquake and flooding everywhere in its way.

As it wouldn't be sensible to develop houses on the fault line, it was proposed that the area could be reserved for nature to take over and restore its former native glory. Today it is covered in lush forest (the bush as it is called here) and a large lake where the dam is. Plenty of native birds, plants and other species are now able to flourish here and they plan to restore the land to how it was before human impact within the next 500 years.

We would definitely recommend a visit to this amazing place if ever in Wellington.

In the evening we got the cable car up to the botanical gardens to watch a free gig at the botanical gardens which is part of a series put on by the Wellington City Council. We chilled on the grass and shared a bottle of wine that we had got from one of the vineyards on our Waiheki Island visit. After dark, the trees leading the paths back were magically lit up.

However, we went off the lightened path and found that the forest had its own lights. After the trip that we had driven over 2 hours for and paid 55 dollars for a tour in the caves, we realised that we had fallen for one of the tourist traps. We were were amazed to find that the forest was covered in thousands of glowworms and realised they must be pretty much everywhere when you know where to look. Still, the caves was a pretty good day anyway and it was exciting to find them for free.Läs mer