Matiu Island

Strangely, Wellington is the best place to see some native NZ wildlife: not far from the Kapiti Island reserve, the Mount Bruce park, and hosting the Karori reserved, and Matiu (or Somes) Island in it's harbor. The later has an interesting history as it was the quarantine island (for animals and humans) back in the days, and a defense spot during the second world war as bunkers were built, in case the enemy would attack Wellington...

Anyway, we visited first the island with Dion and Bastien. The day time was good to see a few skinks and some birds, but the ranger really recommended us to come back and camp overnight on the Island. Which we did a few weeks later with Aurelie and Nicolas.

The two later kayaked to the Island on Sunday afternoon, while I was supposed to take the ferry. Their kayak trip went well, taking the ferry revealed challenging for some reasons... (it a long story by itaself!) Anyway, I managed to reach the island eventually. Indeed, it is really good to spend the night on the Island: it's close to Wellington but far at the same time, the views on the city are excellent at sunset and sunrise. Even better, you can see tons of native animals such as the elusive geckos, some giant wetas (some really large insects), and the old Tuataras. These later are huge sort of lizards reminiscent from before the dinosaurs. They don't do much at all, and don't move most of the time, and need to eat a weta once a month to survive. This laziness imply that they can live old, well over a century... Should we tale some lessons of them???

Considering the way back to Wellington for me and Nicolas, we definitely won't live long: while Aurelie took the Ferry back to Wellington, we kayaked early morning back to Petone, facing a strong head-wind, with the associated surface current... We had to paddle really hard in a relatively rough harbor, and couldn't stop at all during the 3 kms journey... My (untrained) left shoulder got sore for one week because of that...

Anyway, Nicolas made it to work not so late, and we spend a relaxing day shopping in Wellington with Aurelie (she took the day off). Fun trip in any cases!!!

PS: Unfortunately, it was the wrong season for spotting the 280 blue penguins present on the Island. That would have been great, maybe I have to come back a third time!