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.  Enjoyed a hike about a lake that fills a volcanic cone.

From there we took the Desert Highway which crosses a strange cold land of tussock grass broken by roaring streams interrupted by the three great volcanic peaks that punctuate the center of the North Island.  It was clear and we stopped to take images of the snow-covered rocks and read that the big one last killed one hundred and fifty people in 1953.  We drove on very quietly after that hoping the mountain would leave us alone.

Arrived at the southwest corner of the North Island to spend the night before boating to little Kapiti Island where the government has systematically eliminated all of the goats, rats, weasels, and foxes to let the native birds recover a place in the wild.  We saw most of them including the Kiwi which is a national symbol of this country.  It is a precious waddler.  

Now we have come back to the volcanoes to take a day to explore them.  Tomorrow we drive on to north of Auckland.  More sights to see.