Meeting the Cousins

March 9, 2014

We are now on the North Island where the roads are a little straighter and the land a little more developed.   It somehow feels like time is running out although we actually have 24 days left to complete our tour.  I realize that previous holidays during our working life were never more than 14 or 21 days at a time and back then we felt as if that was plenty.  How things have changed.  Ah, but that’s a whole other discussion isn’t it. 

So let’s get back to the cousins.  On our way North we passed through towns called Dannevirke and Norsewood.  For the non-Scandinavian readers, the first town’s name is literally translated as Danish Work, which refers to the embankment built by the Danes on their Southern border to prevent the invasion of the Saxons.  They didn’t build it high enough it seems because they did lose the war in 1864 and a lot of Danish land was lost to Germany.  But let’s not talk about the war.  We’re all good friends now. 

And Norsewood was a town settled mainly by Norwegians and Swedes.  A couple of nice little towns with a few remaining citizens holding onto the traditions in order to establish themselves as a tourist destination.  The most Danish thing we found in Dannevirke was the nice welcome sign with a very large Viking.  On inquiry at the local i-Site we were recommended to stop at the Norsewood Café since the museum was closed that day.  But she wasn’t sure if the menu consisted of anything Danish … not even a Danish?  Hmmm.  We passed on the Café and continued North where we discovered more cousins of a sort.

We arrived at a place called Clifton just in time to sign up for a tractor ride down the coast to Cape Kidnappers.  A tractor ride you say?  Well, yes!  Three tractors in fact, each pulling a trailer where we all hopped on for the 18 km return trip down the beach as the tide was running out. 

At Cape Kidnapper we saw the largest Gannet colony in New Zealand.  Gannets, as we discovered, are cousins of the Blue Footed Boobies of which we saw many on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

Adult gannets are quite beautiful with their golden heads and striking black tipped wings and beautiful markings on their faces.  They have a wingspan of 2 meters and can dive 20 meters below the surface of the ocean to catch their food.  They say they mate for life and spend a lot of time greeting and grooming each other.  They’re very interesting to watch, especially as they come in for a landing.  Their landing must be precise because if they should land too close to another nest, they’ll be given a lambasting from the owners.  A tough thing to do when the nests are about a meter apart and the wind is gusting over the cliff.

The chicks, which at this time of year are almost as large as the adults, are a flecked gray and white.  They will soon fly off on their pilgrimage to Australia leaving the nest for the first time, having to learn to fly and to feed themselves without the help of their parents.  Talk about a quick learning curve!  After spending three to five years in Australia, they will return to their nesting ground, find a mate and begin raising a family.

You may be wondering about the strange name of the Cape.  Cape Kidnapper was named such by the ever-famous Captain Cook who arrived here way back when.  Apparently he had a boy from Tahiti on board his ship and when the Maori’s came out to meet him they saw the boy and took him.  Cook made chase and the boy swam back to Cook’s boat.  The very clever Cook called the Cape ‘Kidnappers’ - or so the story goes.