Elle and Luke sure know how to look after their guests. We started with a drive along the water edge to see the local bays. Followed by brunch in a very cool cafe on the beach over looking the sea as planes and ferries came in. The cafe was a life saving club and they have all the photos up of the life savers, apparently it's a sport here. The brunch was ridiculous and we were all sooo full afterwards.
They then took us to Zealandia, a section of the valley that has been surrounded by a rabbit proof fence. The aim is to keep all predators out and restore the area back to how New Zealand originally was before the Maori introduced mice and dogs and the Europeans then introduced rats, wild pigs, feral cats etc. It was fenced off in 1992 and they have been doing conservation work inside ever since encouraging native birds to nest in the safety of the fence. 
They have given themselves 500 years as a target to get this area back to where it used to be. They have so many fantastic birds in there that have been wiped out on the mainland and only exists on small islands. The rarest of which was the takahe (a big blue flightless bird) they once thought was extinct and now there are only 290 left.
We started the walk and soon spotted loads of Tui. Cool birds, they look dark until they fly and the light catches their wings, you get a great shine of blue. They also have little white collars that look like a ball of cotton wool. The best bit about them is that they 'sing' with a mixture of tuneful tweets and then some horrible throaty clicks and croaks as if they have mild tourettes. 
We could sense that Luke was getting nervous as we walked along about the fact we hadn't seen all that he had told us about and the further we walked the more he was keen for us to spot some cool stuff. 
We stopped off along a track and I happened to notice a cool fan tailed bird. Without realising I had also been staring at a saddleback, another very rare bird that is a big success story of the park because these birds that were again almost extinct are now being spotted in Wellington.
Spotting these two birds broke the spell of just sighting Tui and soon after we saw so many different birds it was brilliant. A KaKa (big parrot) got our hearts racing as it swooped at us as we came over a ridge, they have loud squawks and bright under wing colours.
We recovered by sitting quietly next to a feeding tray and we watches as little Hihi birds flew in and away from the table to feed. They have a beautiful flash of yellow as they fly. My favourite of them all was the little bellbird, we had one sit next to us for quite some time and he slowly puffed himself into a little ball. 
I decided he looked like a tennis ball with wings. Elle and Luke managed to see everything they had missed last time, Elle was great at spotting stuff and found us a massive lizard 'Tuatara' the 'living fossil' which is now extinct on mainland.
We went around the little visitors museum and saw a quick video explaining the plans for the park and what had happened over the last 8000 years. Sadly New Zealand has lost a lot of species from introduced predators but they are now making big efforts to protect their native birds and reptiles. 
In fact Luke has been working as a trapper with his dad and was telling us about what they do, NZ are aiming to get rid of possums, feral cats and ferrets etc to become predator free by 2050 (probably unlikely but a target in the right direction).
Luke and Elle then took us up to the top of the botanical gardens where we were able to look down on the city. It's a really lovely city on the hillside overlooking the sea. We had drinks up there overlooking the city before we drove down to wander through the busy city centre and along the water front by the harbour.
We popped back to theirs for a luxury shower before heading back out to their local area for dinner. We went to this cool bar called the moon where everything was space themed which had good beers on tap for the boys and pizza and chips for us all. 
To my pleasant surprise the bar had live music on a Wednesday so I was really chuffed to see a band set up. Elle and Luke didn't seem so keen as they explained that the bar supported new, 'up and coming' bands. 
I'm sad to say tonight's band probably won't be going anywhere any time soon, the bar emptied pretty quickly when they started. We ate dinner whilst being drowned out by an over confident and over enthusiastic drummer banging and crashing over an out of tune trumpet and bass player who swapped and switched instruments between drum solos.
A final drink in a more tame bar before we came home to chill out before bed. I didn't last long after a full day of sightseeing, I'm shattered and will sleep very well tonight in this lovely apartment away from the campervan!!
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