On Wednesday morning, Anne, Chuck, Roman, Vincent, Mike, Paige, Taylor, Hazel and I  took the 10 am Dolphin Fleet boat to go whale watching.  The weather was sunny and we had relatively calm waters.  After clearing the tip of Cape Cod, we soon came upon several fin back whales.   They are the second largest whales and were cruising along the surface.  We watched them for a while and then headed out to sea where we found a couple of humpback whales.   These whales surprised us by quickly breaching and putting on a bit of a show diving and swinging their fins out of the water.     After...

Amazing, our 2 and 1/2 month expedition is drawing to a close. Sunday afternoon here and we are relaxing after two days on an even smaller island, Tiritiri Matangi, north of Aukland. We spent one night in the bunkhouse there with researchers, volunteers, and other tourists like us. Tiritiri is lovely and “predator free” and so hosts kiwi, takahe, and various other strange and lovely birds. In 1980 it was a desolate pasture with rats and other vermin. Today it is 80% forested and is the place most rich in native wildlife.

If it is Wednesday, we must be on the volcano. This past week has truly been a tour with mostly two night stands across the North Island of New Zealand. All good, we landed in Auckland with the brand new downtown convention center burning down. It took days. We had arrived late and missed our visit at high tide to the world class shorebird roost at Miranda on Thames. We stopped there the next morning at low tide to find the sandpipers scattered far out in the shallows before continuing on to Rotorua with its mud pots, thermal pools, and fragrance of sulfur.