Dogs were being walked and fed in the downstairs part of the house near our rooms quite early in the morning, so after a good night’s sleep we were up and drinking coffee by 7:30am. No rest for the wicked, or certainly no lie-ins!
Vanessa made us an amazing coffee with the machine hidden in her walk-in pantry, so it looked like a magic trick when she walked in with an empty mug and came out with a freshly brewed mug of delicious caffeine.
Dave and Vanessa’s daughter dropped off her son for Vanessa to take to school with Ari, and we figured if there was going to be a mass exodus from the house, we might as well make a move too. Anneke was itching to see her old bird friends that she’d looked after and reared a few years previous, and the enclosures were only at the end of the garden, so we walked across and had a look around.
Dave breeds, imports and sells exotic birds, which sell for a handsome sum with several zeros. Ironically, a lot of them are native Australian birds and wander (or flying equivalent) free only hours away. It was a bit surreal to see birds that had been flying around as free as pigeons in a neighbouring(ish) country being bred here as some exotic specimen. They clearly weren’t the kind of birds who fly long-haul.
We walked around and greeted pretty much any bird that would say hello to us, which was the majority since parrots are chatty and inquisitive creatures.
After many conversations with many birds we then talked to the current human in charge of looking after all the birds and who’d replaced Anneke when she left the position. He showed us around the lodge that the chief bird carer lives in (Anneke’s old digs), which overlooks the vast swaths of land that Dave owns. He’s got an amazing eye for interior design and has even built his own furniture in places, including a partition wall in the bedroom to create a walk-in wardrobe behind it. He also has some spectacular indoor plants growing in various and creative ways. You wonder where he finds the time with all the birds and dogs and mouths to feed and care for, but just as Anneke found, you don’t get to have much of a life outside the facility because you always need to be on hand for the animals. So, I guess if you’re a prisoner in your own home, you do find the time to make your home nice and get good at keeping plants and baby birds alive. Next to his living room is a room where they incubate eggs laid by the parrots and help them grow from hatchlings.
Once we’d finished our tour of the chief bird carer lodgings, we went down to the main office area where Dave’s company were having a morning tea, which was being laid out by one of their suppliers. This meant that all the staff were gathered around the office kitchen and there was coffee and a spread of pastries, canapés and finger food, including a load of mince pies. I’m finding it unusually difficult to get into the Christmas spirit when the weather outside here is sunny and warm. This is no place for pine trees, snow and sleigh bells…
Anneke was warmly greeted several times by old colleagues who obviously missed her, having not seen her for several years since she left. This prompted Anneke to promise to come back more often, and she even offered to come and do some gardening and help out with the birds, if needed. She’s just the gift that keeps on giving!
The morning tea started to wind down as people reluctantly went back to work and we began saying our goodbyes and thanked Dave and Vanessa for having us.
Tawharanui Open Sanctuary
Our next stop was Tawharanui (pronounced Taffaranooee (wh = f) Open Sanctuary, where we hoped to see some of the protected native NZ birds that live there. We both used the toilets (this will become relevant later) and then walked towards the stunning beach at the edge of the park. So tempting to go for a swim but we were a bit short on time.
There are several walks you can do around the park of varying lengths, but because we were due to pick up Vader by 4pm and it was already 2:30pm, we decided to walk along the ‘eco trail’. Despite being able to hear lots of different birds, they were hard to see among the thick trees, but we did spot pukeko, fantails, tui, bellbirds, New Zealand pigeon (huge – the size of a buzzard) and possibly a whitehead popokatea.
We were really keen to see a kaka or a takahe, which are fairly big (chicken-sized) flightless birds, and we got hopeful at one point because we heard rustling in the undergrowth and waited to see if it would poke its head out. Alas, we soon saw a rabbit hopping around and figured that was probably what we’d heard.
We carried on walking for a bit until Anneke felt her pocket and stopped suddenly in her stride.
“Car keys… where are the car keys? Where have I put the car keys? Oh, I think I left them on the back of the toilet door…”
So, that was as far as we got on the ‘eco trail’, as it seemed more pertinent to go and retrieve our means of transport than carry on searching for birds that refused to be found.
Much to our relief, Anneke’s car keys were exactly where she’d left them… on the back of the toilet cubicle door. How lovely and safe New Zealand feels sometimes!
Matakana Village
Since our eco trail had been cut short by the car key drama, we had time for a quick stop in Matakana, which is somewhere Anneke had taken me back in 2012. It’s a cute little village which now hosts a zero-waste farmer’s market every Saturday and has lots of nice independent shops (including a bacon butty cafe) and a laid-back but tidy feel to it.
There is a place that sells ‘real fruit’ ice creams in blueberry or strawberry flavour, so we got one of those each to eat in the sun and walk around the village with.
They were creamy and delicious and very filling, so I ended up feeding some of the wafer to some sparrow fledglings and their parents who found us by the riverside.
Retrieving Vader
Our next and very important stop was to go and pick up Vader from doggy daycare. She seemed very happy to see her mummy again, despite photos uploaded to Facebook by the daycare showing that she was having a whale of a time with the other dogs there.
(INSERT VIDEO OF REUNION)
We got back in the car with Vader, where she settled into her usual habit of sticking her head out of the car, ears flapping in the wind.
Back at the ranch
We picked up some stuff for dinner from the supermarket on the way home and cooked up some satay chicken and ate on the balcony as it was a nice warm evening in Puhoi.
It was delicious and very filling! It had been a busy Thursday and we had an early start the next day for our day of work in Paremoremo and Orewa, so we took ourselves to our respective beds and got a good night’s sleep, ready to don our gardening gloves in the morning!
Blonde on a Road Trip 
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