Site Report: Stewart Island

Visits

• 2012-01-03: We started off our trip to New Zealand by going to the furthest spot first. We flew overnight from San Francisco to Auckland to Christchurch to Invercargill to Stewart Island. All of this took about 20 hours, but strangely I did not really feel jet lagged. I learned much later that New Zealand is 21 hours ahead of San Francisco time which means only a three hour (and one day) difference. We arrived late in the day to Oban which is the only real settlement on the island. Everywhere else is mostly covered with forest. We took a hike out to Akers point from where we saw some albatross. We meant to be there at dusk to see some penguins, but the sun was not setting until quite late at night. The next day we took a short trip over to Ulva island which is supposed to be the native forest bird island. We walked around there for a couple of hours, and then I was picked up for a boat journey to the wreck reef on the south part of the island. The boat trip was good with a number of albatross and other sea birds as well as a few sea lions. The next day, Barbara and I joined Abe from Santa Cruz whom I had met on the boat for a trip out to the Mason Bay hut. We took a water taxi to the Freshwater hut, and from there it took about 3.5 hours to walk in. The hut was basic but very clean and a good value for $5. We walked for a few miles to find some pilot whales that had washed up on the beach. That night, we went looking for the kiwi that are supposed to be living here. As we were walking on the trail, a kiwi came crashing out of the undergrowth. It ran straight toward Barbara and then across the road into some ferns where it started digging into the ground. As I crouched there watching it, the kiwi walked up to me. It was only a few inches away from my leg when it decided it did not like what it was seeing and ran off a few feet away to dig in another spot. The next day, as we were hiking out, we saw possibly the same kiwi at 9 o'clock in the morning! Another highlight of Stewart Island was seeing blue penguins coming in to roost near the wharf. After four nights on the island, we took the ferry back over to the South Island to start our rental car adventure.

Species Seen

Lifelists

• Australasia
• World

Trips

• New Zealand