The Gannet trip

We drove down to Napier and tried to book into Kennedy Park, talk about coincidence, but we were too early. The purpose of the day was to go to Cape Kidnappers to see the gannet colony. So having been refused entry to the holiday park we drove up to the site of the tour and had our lunch at a picnic table on the beach.

This was a windy lunch and after watching Andy fish for a while we headed off to get our tickets.
This proved to be another dangerous trip , much in keeping with many other trips we have been on, I am required to do dangerous things, like stay in a tsunami flood area or cross a major road four or five times just for the sake of it.

The trip to the gannet colony involved a nine kilometre trip along the beach on a trailer attached to a tractor. The trip started at low tide but even then we had to go in and out of the sea and get our feet wet. It was quite exciting. At the end of the nine kilometre trip we had to climb a huge cliff to see the gannets on their nests. As we arrived on the top of the cliff we were met by a seventy mile an hour wind and we had paid for this!!!! Personally I felt the whole trip should have resulted in me getting danger money.
Luckily for us at this point the sun was shining, but as we arrived back on the beach to catch the tractor home it started to rain. This was the first time it had seriously rained all the time we had been in NZ. We needed up sat on the trailer holding a blue tarpaulin firmly over our heads. The expedition photographer took about three hundred photographs of the gannets which is par for the course. It was a little difficult to work out how to hold on to the tarpaulin with one hand and the safety rail with the other. This was fairly hard but I also had to look after the expedition photographer and stop her falling off the trailer in her eagerness to take photographs.

On the way back to the starting point of the trip we came across a broken down quad bike on the beach so the tractor stopped and we ended up towing the quad bike and its two occupants along the beach as well. If we had not done this the quad bike would have been lost at the next high tide!!
 The trip took four hours in total and we arrived back at seven fifteen, there then followed a race to get back to the camp site, 20 kilometres away before eight o clock when reception shut. We managed this but of course had had no meal so we enquired if the restaurant on site was open. We were assured it was but were told we had to go to it immediately, as if they had no customers they would shut down. We dropped our worldly belongings off in our room and raced to the restaurant to find all the lights turned out. I managed to find an open door and started shouting and the two teenagers, apparently in charge, told us the  restaurant was shut but we could, have take always. As a result we all ordered fish and chips and having had a beer whilst we waited took our meals back to our room to eat.
We each had two little bits of fish and a mountain of chips. Still we were fed and the bottle of wine we shared made sure we went to bed fairly contented.