We hopped in the car last Sunday and headed about 40 minutes north of Wellington to visit Kaitoke national park. Kaitoke is widely advertised as being the setting for Rivendell, the city of the elves in The Lord of the Rings. I promise we planned to visit the park before I knew this (aside: the LOTR tourism is embarrasingly huge here. I liked the movies, too, but you wouldn't believe the people who flock here just to check out where the movie was filmed). This area is also where Wellington gets its drinking water, which explains why it tastes so good.The park had a lot of older trees, some dating back a thousand years or so to the time when moa roamed the land. This leads me to present your bit of NZ paleontology for the day: NZ originally separated from Gondwana about 85 million years ago and subsequently developed a completely unique set of flora and fauna which resemble that of Gondwana more closely than anywhere else on earth. That's why the plants and trees here look like drawings from dinosaur books (viz. tree ferns). There were no mammals; large, flightless birds took over the role of major land predators. When humans arrived about a thousand years back, they found this quite amusing. They clubbed the moa to death and ate them for dinner and now there are only a few species of flightless birds here which you can find in a few remote and heavily protected locations.
Here's Amy hanging out in front of one of a very old tree with a very long name:
The forests here are dark, cool, and completely covered in moss and lichen. When you combine this with the prehistoric flora, it makes for a very unique hike.
Amelia has been worrying about me lately because I apparently get too close to the edge of cliffs for her liking. Here we are next to a small dropoff, as she keeps a close eye on the situation.
After the main hike, we walked the 10 minutes from the parking lot to the site where Rivendell was set. It was nice, but a bit underwhelming given the surrounding scenery.
I'll leave you with a picture of Quinn, who thinks it quite mundane to take pictures with a closed mouth:
4 comments:
Love all of the pics! Quinn looks like such a happy little guy. What beautiful scenery you all are getting to experience. Miss you guys!
Angela
Hope everything is good with you guys.
Bruce, you been watching the LSU games? What a lucky game against Auburn. Didn't think you guys were gonna pull that one out.
Quinn is really growing. He looks to be as big as Amelia.
We're having a poker tournament next weekend. I'll keep an empty seat there for you (in memory).
I have one other question: what's the frequency in which they play 'Men At Work' on the radio? I have a picture in my head that they play them all the time if they play a lot of 80's music.
Talk to you soon.
Fries (& family)
I hope you have seen the remarkable resemblance between Quinn's open mouth grin and his papa's in the photo above. The apple does not far fall from the tree ;)
Hey there - Just caught up on all the posts for Sept, and love the pics. C's walking too now - she decided to joint the land of the upright walkers in Sept. So happy you all are using your weekends to explore! What's the latest on what happens after NZ?
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