Stewart Island, Ulva Island, Pushy Americans, Pub Quizzes and Wild Kiwis

We had arrived on Stewart Island early evening, it was still light, just but the evening was getting old, Sandra was tired, as was I having been up very early for our Shark Adventure, and it seemed like a bit of a trek to the AirBnB where we were staying, a cabin in the woods by a sea inlet. Luckily we found a taxi number and called it and within a few minutes, we were dropped off on a remote road in the middle of nowhere apparently close to our cabin. The taxi driver seemed concerned that the cabin was so remote and we had no car to use.

A word of warning here. Don’t so what we did and assumed you can get around easily on Stewart Island. You can’t. If you book accommodation make sure you can get the use of a vehicle when you book. We didn’t but luckily our taxi driver was great and said he would pick us up the next morning to take us to the dock to get our boat to Ulva Island.

So making our way in the dark we stumbled along the top of the beach through some boggy ground and eventually saw our sign for the cabin. We clambered up some steps and into the very warm cabin. Poor Sandra was quite worn out, I was not much better, but we needed to eat and drink so we got out the soup we had packed, heated it up, cut up the loaf we had with us and made a cup of tea. There was only one chair, but we managed. Not an auspicious start, but we were warm and dry.

Next morning, we had a quick breakfast and met our taxi and headed for the wharf at Golden Bay where we were to meet our Ulva Island tour guide, Furhana from Ruggedy Range Wilderness Tours.

Let’s take a step back. Stewart Island lies of the south of South Island of New Zealand, most of the island is a nature reserve, but people do live there and it is a popular holiday destination for a lot of people. It’s only real town is called Oban, revealing it’s Scottish connections like a lot of South Island. There are a lot of small islands dotted around the coast of Stewart Island and one of them Ulva Island is a full nature reserve which has been cleared of invasive animal species such as rats and mice. Many endangered birds live on Ulva Island and whilst neither Sandra or myself are obsessive “twitchers”, we like a good bird. So after a short wait whilst Furhana fetched her boat, we set off and headed for Ulva Island.

We arrived at a little wharf by a private house on Ulva Island and with our guide off we went. We had with us two American couples, one were perfectly pleasant, the other, not so much so. All were very, very keen birders, a bit too keen for our liking, as we ended up doing a route march looking for a specific set of birds on the one couple’s list of “must see”. So come lunchtime it had all got a bit much for the poor guide who was not able to placate the rather obsessive couple as to why they had not seen all they expected to see. The rather obvious explanation that these were wild animals, and they didn’t appear to order seemed to be not sufficient. So after some discussions with Furhana, we agreed that we would continue for the afternoon on the island by ourselves as we were happy to wander around at our pace and she would pick us up later that day at an agreed time. This also meant we could free ourselves of the rather stifling couple and so we headed out onto the paths of Ulva Island.

We had a wonderful time, seeing all kinds of birds (see images), particularly the very cute and inquisitive Stewart Island Robin and having an incredible encounter with some sea lions. There were a couple on the beach just snoozing, when a bunch of Chinese tourists decided to get a bit close and disturbed one, then another appeared, chased off one, then the other and then headed right back to where we were sitting on the beach. He was a big fella, and he looked cheesed off that we were in his spot, so we did the sensible thing, faced up to him and fought him off. No we didn’t obviously. We scarpered for it, you don’t mess around with a half ton teenage bull sea lion!

Eventually we headed back to the wharf and picked up our boat. We still had an evening excursion booked with Furhana to spot Kiwis and we wanted to do that. But getting back to that cabin seemed a bind, so we decided instead to head for the Fish and Chip Shop after negotiating a reasonable deal with Furhana to do a private kiwi spotting trip, when normally 4 is the minimum. We enjoyed a very nice Fish ‘n Chips, not quite as nice as the Pirimai Chippy in Napier where we are living in New Zealand, but good nevertheless. After that we decided to go to the bar at the South Sea Hotel and wait until 9:00pm which was when the kiwi trip started.

Well, that turned out to be a great evening, as it was quiz night! We like a good quiz, and we just managed to get ourselves a place and a team sheet before the questions started. The quizmaster was a Brit, so that helped us, as despite his protestations, I detected a distinct Anglo-centric bias in the questions. We didn’t do this by ourselves, every good bar needs an old local sitting in the corner, especially if the bar is near the seafront. And the South Sea Hotel is no exception, it has Bugsy (real name Dave) who we seconded to our team which we subsequently named “Bugsy and the Poms”. And we did alright, in fact we came second overall out of about 17 teams which we thought was pretty good. Bugsy was happy too!

Fresh from our quizzing success, we headed for the rendezvous with Furhana, and before we departed into the night to find kiwis, she gave us a very detailed briefing on how to track a kiwi at night. Now these birds have very poor eyesight, virtually no wings, and walk around smelling things with their nostrils which are uniquely at the end of it’s beak. They can detect smells from humans, so knowing the wind direction is key and also keeping in a tight group, making as little sound as possible is crucial. Armed with this knowledge out we headed. I expected to be driving around for about 2 hours seeing nothing. How wrong I was. Within 5 minutes we drove past a small pond and Furhana stopped the vehicle and we all climb out carefully and armed with our cameras and red-light torches, we shuffled over to a couple of bushes near the pond edge and sure enough, there rummaging amongst the bushes … was a real wild kiwi. Furhana was great she managed to steer us into a great position without alarming the bird at all and we took some video and pictures in the red-light which really add to the eerie nature of this bird. Brilliant end to a brilliant day.

We headed back to our remote cabin and had a decent night’s sleep and then were up in the morning for a taxi to take us back to the harbour to catch the ferry back to Bluff on South Island. It was a lovely crossing, much calmer and with hints of blue sky, so by mid morning we had crossed back over the Forveaux strait for the fourth time in three days and were reunited with our campervan and we headed off for our next adventure: a meeting with glo-worms and a bucket-list trip to Doubtful Sound in the amazing Fiordland area of South West New Zealand.

Cheers