Sunshine, Ocean (well Sea) and Green stuff

Today was the first cloudless, totally sunny day that we have had for a long time. So we decided to go exploring in our neighorhood. We first went to a place called Battle Hill Farm Park. It was first settled as a family farm in 1849. It had been the location of the last battle between the Maori (indiginous people) and the British (invaders). The farm remained in the original family until about 1980, when it became part of the greater Wellington park system. They still farm and raise cows, sheep, goats, and deer. Interestingly, all mammals have been introduced to the islands, so there were no wild deer. They have deer farms and the venison industry is a lucrative business, but you don't worry about hitting a deer when driving on a back road at night. Only the Kiwi, a bird that is nocturnal, but it is only the size of a football, so no worries. Since it is also dark brown, you probably wouldn't see it anyway.

We hiked around the  farm for a couple of hours and ate lunch there. They have camping in one area, so if anyone drops by our place and wants to camp out, we have found the place. Here are some photos of the farm. New Zealand is always beautiful, but many days are cloudy, so when you get the blue sky in the background, it is amazing.

 The bare part along the skyline is the battle area. 

See, I guess I don't smile in selfies. 

This is the camping area. Look through the trees to see the tent and van.















The road up here is called Paekakariki Hill Road. The road continues west to the Tasman Sea, and ends in the town of Paekakariki.  The road is like 1) the Alpine Loop (for Utah drivers), or 2) Oak Creek Canyon (for Arizona drivers). Not alway a full 2 lanes. But a motorcyclist's fun road.

When we got just over the top, before heading back down to sea level, we got the best view of the west coastline that we have seen so far.

 This is Paekakariki just below us.

 The South Island in the distance. It is a 3 hour ferry ride from Wellington.

Kapiti Island just off the west coast. 

After we drove off the hill, we went to Queen Elizabeth Park in Paekakariki to visit the US Marine Memorial. In World War II, the marines had 3 camps here to prepare for assaults in the South Pacific, and for battle worn soldiers to come here to recuperate after fighting. Guadalcanal soldiers came here, for example. If anyone wants to read more on it, go to this site: http://marinenz.com/ It is very interesting to read about it.  As a side note, the marines were here about 2 years into the war. The single New Zealand men had been gone about the same length of time, fighting with the British in North Africa and Europe. So the girls left behind had gotten a bit lonely. About 2,000 girls married American soldiers....

 This part of the memorial is a likeness of a landing craft. One of the wartime exercises that he Marines did was practice storming the beach. One epic example proved disastrous. 

The orders came to do a drill in late June (nice and summery in WashingtonDC, but the middle of winter in NZ). The timing was also off in that they didn't check the tide, so the landing craft got stuck on the low tide, far from shore, since the bottom was quite flat. The seas were about 6 foot swells. Finally the command orders boats to pull the landing craft back to the ships, but they didn't or couldn't turn them around, so they were being pulled stern first in high waves. The already sodden, almost frozen marines got hammered with wave after wave swamping the landing craft from the sterns. At the end, they lost one landing craft and 11 men. Somehting that didn't need to happen.  You can read the whole story on the website.

This is a replica of the small barracks that the soldiers, mainly officers stayed in. 

This little video was taken on a path just a few feet from the memorial. It is now a bird sanctuary. We didn't see any birds up close, but the sound of several frogs was so loud that I recorded it. Hope you enjoy it.  Never did see the frogs though.