Kapiti Island

Kapiti Island, 5km off the coast just north of Wellington has been a nature reserve since the 1950’s, and has been free of all introduced mammals (cats, goats, rabbits, rats, mice, etc.) since the last possums were eradicated in 1996. As a result, it’s one of the few places you can see what the forest would be like without deer, goats and possums eating it, and where you can see many native birds that have been driven to extinction or close to it on the mainland. Kapiti is also a hard place to visit—you need a permit, and then you have to arrange a boat—it only sees 50 visitors per day at most. We were fortunate that Richard’s father had obtained a permit, and after a false start earlier when heavy rain had made the tracks too dangerous, we finally got to go across on the last day of our trip.

There is only really one destination on the island, to the summit. It’s only 690m, but you do start right at sea level, and it’s very steep. In fact, the west side of the island is an almost sheer cliff, and the East side, where the track is, isn’t much better. There and back took us 4 1/2 hours, although that was as much due to stopping to watch the birds as it was to the distance and climb.

The forest was very dense, so often we heard the birds rather than seeing them, but we did have some lovely encounters with New Zealand Robins (just like English ones, except with grey backs and white breasts), Kaka (large parrots, and Weka (flightless birds that tend to try to steal things out of your bag, or your lunch out of your hands), among many others. The view from the top was fabulous, with nothing but ocean to the west (there’s nothing until Australia, thousands of miles away), and the steep cliffs of the island below us. A lovely walk, and a chance to see how New Zealand might have been before the settlers arrived.