Ruud Kleinpaste: Holiday highlights for Nature Nerds

I have always loved travel, especially to great Natural Environments. We all have favourite destinations and I have been extremely lucky touring the world while filming for Discovery Channel and Animal Planet – But in New Zealand alone, there are plenty of places that are inspirational when you want to have a break for all sorts of reasons:

Gardening

Botanic gardens in Auckland, Hamilton, Christchurch, Otari (Wellington), Dunedin, Queens Park Invercargill, Napier and Waikereru (Just outside Gisborne). Most have their own botanical highlights: local plants, or a series of trees and shrubs from around the world – others focus on botanists and their historical discoveries.

Otari/Wilton Bush: New Zealand’s only public botanic garden dedicated solely to native plants – all because of a vision by Leonard Cocaine.

Waikereru – Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander plants from Cook’s Endeavour.

If you want to get some inspiration for your garden, go and visit some of those places mentioned above. This is gardening on a huge scale. At the same time you’ll find out what grows well in your region and often keep up on the latest plant releases.

Stunning Natural Parks

Mount Taranaki – great tracks in the National park: The Puffer Track going up steeply and showing you the spectacular botany as you climb higher and higher, ending up on the Round-the-Mountain track.

You may have heard about the famous cloud forests (Moist air going upwards in Mountainous Tropical areas) – well, if you park your car at the lower end of the North Egmont carpark (down from the visitor centre) you can access the Connett loop track, which goes through New Zealand’s cloud forest. This is the real deal in Aotearoa.

The Lewis Pass (right at the top) has a fabulous, high altitude walk around wetlands (tarns) with orchids flowering and constantly on the edge of the tree-line: shrunken alpine versions of trees you might know from lower altitudes. If you like Lichens, this is the walk to make. Great insect life all over the place, especially in late spring and summer. (Alpine stone weta!)

Further south, try to spend some time in the Catlins. Sealions, Southern rata flowering, deserted beaches and extraordinary forests in pristine landscapes. This is where you immediately get the definition of Biodiversity. This is the very first time in my life that I have mentioned the Catlins on the wireless – it should remain a secret place for ever and ever (ake ake).

Milford track too long for you? I have a perfect alternative: Start the Routeburn track on SH 94 (the Milford Road, an hour north of Te Anau) and get to Key Summit. Pick a good weather day and get to the top: Alpine views, wetlands with magical wetland plants (a few Sundew species – Drosera); these plants eat insects – extraordinary! Key summit is the Natural History of Lord of the Rings. Oh yes… rock wrens !!!

Ecological “Islands”

These are bits of our Landscape that have been made predator-free. That allows the presence of pretty rare birds, lizards, aquatic critters and insects, to name but a few groups under pressure.

Zealandia (Wellington) is a mere 20 minutes from down town. Predator proof fence keeps the nasties out; kaka,Tuatara, falcons, kiwi, tieke hihi etc etc. The noise can be deafening.

Maungatautari near Cambridge, south of Hamilton is an impressive breeding ground for western brown kiwi: “kohanga kiwi”. After releasing some of these birds there, the numbers increased dramatically. Now these birds can be translocated to other sites with effective pest control. Good numbers of other endangered birds and bats.

Brook Waimarama near Nelson where the predator-proof fence keeps the locals safe. It’s a great valley with aquatic habitats and my favourite giant carnivorous snails (Powelliphanta)

Orokonui EcoSanctuary North of Dunedin city. One of the few places where you can see the large Otago