part 1 of our road trip to Napier

I think I prefer short trips of a couple of days better than a week-long vacation holiday most of the time. Hubby is awesome at planning the basics of our trips. He makes sure we get there on time and have a place to sleep. And he always has some places to visit up his sleeve along with some alternatives in case of bad weather. He's a good planner :)

Since it's winter here in our hemisphere, things are a bit slower than usual and that's fine with us, since we don't like to deal with crowds or lots of traffic. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to see!

We stopped at Owlcatraz Bird and Wildlife Park in Shannon on our way to Napier. There wasn't much going on but we were greeted by Joey who is 17 years old. He took quite a shine to Hubby!

We also got to see 6 of our only native owls--called Ruru in Maori and generally called Moreporks because somebody said that's what their call sounded like they were saying.  These are their names. They are 3 pairs of owls that mate for life.

After seeing the captive birds in their enclosure, the owner told us that a wild ruru had been hanging around and she found it sleeping in a tree! Hubby took some great photos of him/her and I will post them on my photoblog sometime soon.

More to come....


Click here if you want to find out more about rurus.