More on Hauraki Gulf

Started reading Eat Pray Love last night. I'm still really enjoying The Fountainhead it was just night to read something light at night. Plus I have been reading about Bellbirds for two days now.

Windy night. Felt like I was going to wake up with a yellow brick road outside of my little cabin. You'll all be happy to know that I still found my large banana tree and cement walkway littered with snails who didn't quite survive people walking to their cabins at night. May they rest in peace.

Drove to a lookout point today to view part of the Hauraki Plains. Once again it was crazy windy. We couldn't really see much because of the rain clouds--hence no picture.

Then we drove to a town nearby, Ngatea ("Nahteeah"). It is a dairy farm town. Surrounding the area are hundreds of hectares of farm land. We talked about how runoff of farming effluent is a major issue for the Firth of Thames (body of water outside my door, and what the effluent is dumped into essentially). There is a series of canals, leading to two major rivers, which carries the runoff into the Firth of Thames.

Walked around the town for a bit to stretch our legs and grab a cup of coffee. Unfortunately I only brought American money (silly me) and just sat and flipped through beautiful holiday magazines about New Zealand. Over all not a bad time. The cafe was really cute too. It was called the Copper Kettle.

After our stop in Ngatea, we drove to the Miranda Bird Center. It is not far from our camp in Whakatiwai.

Inside we looked at a lot of taxidermy birds. Did a bit of shopping--all proceeds go towards the conservation of shorbirds. I of course still had American money, but will mostly likely be going back at some point. I can bike there in about and hour and a half. Nice bike ride too...flat!

Here are some pictures of what we saw there.

Fantail. There is a book at the center called "Abigail the Fantail" which may or may not be coming home with me at the end of this trip.
Morepork Owl. This one's for you Mom.