Merry Christmas Eve everyone, we have our christmas eve well planned today!
Silky Oak Chocolate is our first destination. To our disappointment, there's not much special with this chocolate factory. There's a chocolate souvenir shop, cafe and a chocolate museum. Only 10 minuters and we already finished visiting the whole thing. However, we are too early to reach there and we need to wait until 11am for the free tour at classic sheepskins. So we decided to have a drink at their chocolate cafe.
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| Their signature chocolate extreme with chili flakes, taste not bad! The chocolate is really rich and thick, the taste is special! You can feel a tingling sensation of spiciness left in your toungue (but not too spicy). |
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| Hot chocolate, i love it too |
Second station - Classic Sheepskins.
The worlds finest sheepskin rugs are manufactured into premium products for comfort and enjoyment. Here, we see various New Zealand souvenirs, woollen clothing and knitwear. The sheepskins is so soft and colorful! Unfortunately, the staff told us that the free tour is not available today as the factory is closed for Christmas.
Since we have no destiny with the sheepskin free tour, we then rushed to Church Road Winery, to participate in an hour winery tour. Church Road Winery applies the traditional winemaking techniques, and it is one of the best in Hawke's Bay harvest.
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| Their popular Mc Donald series |
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| the barrels at room temperature |
Entering another building keeping barrels at a colder temperature
There's also a wine museum and we got to know some history of wine.
After the tour visiting and listening to its details histories winemaking process bla bla bla, the long-awaiting moment finally come!!! Wine tasting time!
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| 5 different wines for us to taste, and I tasted all of them! A very breakthrough for me (even though I still don't like the taste :p) |
Before lunch, we have a stop at Arataki Honey, Hastings. Arataki Honey has a visitor centre. We learned about honey making, a honey bee life process, and see through the eyes of a bee. We also tasted 10 distinct flavor of honey. There's also other bee products include propolis, pollen, and royal jelly. |
| bee hives |
Take our christmas eve lunch at Clifton Cafe
After lunch, it's the most exciting activity of the day - gannet watching at Cape Kidnappers! This is a last minute decided trip and we are so excited to participate in the gannet adventures tour, as it is highly rated in trip advisor. You can't see gannets all the time, the season runs from October to April. When the chicks leave, almost all adults return to the sea for the winter months.
This is a 4 hours unique, fun eco-experience tour, and we got to travel along the majestically rugged coastline from Clifton to Cape Kidnappers, the largest mainland gannet colony in the world. Once we saw the vintage tractor that we're going to hop on, all of us were instantly filled with eagerness and surprises!
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| Our iconic vintage tractors, soooo cool!!! |
The feeling of riding on this trailer is truely awesome! The weather is very good today, not too hot and it's windy, so we can feel the wind blowing to us along the way, which is relatively comfortable and relaxing. The view along the seaside is amazing, with all the towering cliffs. Handsome man is very passionate and he explains to us how this nature has been shaped and formed.
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| This is how we go to Cape Kidnappers |
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| handsome man busy explaining |
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| The cliff with 3 layers of different colors. Handsome man did explained why and how this is formed, but I just can't remembered =P |
On our way, we saw a man who was fishing there, and his fishing rod was shaking vigorously! Out of curiosity, we stopped there and see what he caught.
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| oh my god.... guess what? IT'S A DEVIL RAYS!!!!!!! |
So lucky of us that we've witnessed the whole process of how this devil rays was fished by the man.
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| Did you see the black bird who open up his wings? Handsome man said that this species (I forgot the name of the species again) is very special, they tend to catch fish from the sea for food, and after that, they need to open up their wings for hours to dry up their feather, just as what you seen here. |
After about 40 minutes of journey, we start to see some gannets resting on the cliffs.
This is not the end yet!
The tracks continue its way, until it stopped at Cape Kidnappers entrance. Handsome man told us that we still have to walk 30 minutes up the hill to see the gannets colony.
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| This is what we see on top of the hill!!!!OMG~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
We spend our time with the gannets, get incredibly close to them in their natural habitat. The amazing wildlife scene is so AWESOME that we thought we are in a life discovery channel! This sort of view is something we never ever seen, and neither would we have the chance to see! The whole ambience is unbelievably good!
Some stories about gannets ~
Gannets were actually not noted by Captain James Cook during his coastline visit in 1769, which leads us to assume that they have not always been present in this area. Gannets were first noted at Cape Kidnappers in small numbers in about 1850 by Henry Hill, a NZ naturalist.
Now, the cape accommodates over 20,000 birds spread over four main nesting sites. Recent research has shown that the gannet numbers here are growing by around 2.5% each year. They are present at the Cape from August to April every year for the sole purpose of breeding. What amaze me about gannets is that when the baby gannets age around 15 - 16 weeks, the chicks will take their first ever flight - a solo instinctive migration of around 2,800km to Australian waters!!! Chuen said that even baby gannets do whatever it takes to see the world, even during their first flight, they fly so far, so high, welcoming the unknown dangerous world. Sadly, the mortality of baby gannets is very high, only 20 - 30% of them have a chance to return to their birth colony at Cape Kidnappers, at around 2 -3 years old. This completes their beautiful adult coloring. The gannets will then spend the rest of their lives in this area - on land to breed, and on NZ sea-waters for the winter.
Gannets are an impressive sight with their defined markings, coloring and their superb elegance in flight. A diving gannet is also a sight to see - they can hit the water at speeds of up to 140km/hr! Sometimes, gannet pairs rub their heads and beaks together, preen each other and bow and call to each other. This is done during courtship or when one partner returns to the nest. They normally mate for life.
Gannets is a romantic chicks. Female and male gannets look the same. They share both incubation duties and the responsibilities of raising the chick.
To end this breathtaking christmas eve, we settled ourself in Breakers Cafe and Bar.
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| Christmas Eve Dinner: Kiwi Burger, Pork Chop, Scallops, Steak |
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