So after nearly 3 months touring NZ it is our last full day today. We didn’t want to go into Auckland with all the traffic so we visited the Auckland botanical gardens close to Clevedon.

It was free entry,to our surprise, and we spent a couple of hours there. Now it’s Autumn here the summer flowers have gone but we still found lots of colourful plants there. There were monarch butterflies in the herb garden. It was so good to see them there. They had a good cafe there and we called back there later in the afternoon on our way back to the hotel. We walked all round the whole area over a huge hillside.

Can you see grandma and grandad?

Next we went along the seabird coast towards Miranda. We only saw a few kingfishers today.

We had the coastlines to ourselves most of the time and saw plovers, black swans, oyster catchers, herons, ducks, stilts, kingfisher, Swifts,birds of prey.

The wind got up in the afternoon otherwise it was a hot dry day. A good day to be our last day here.

I need to upload photos from Thursday and today. The wifi here is very poor. I’ll do it when I can.

So tomorrow we will gain the day we lost flying here. We leave here Saturday 30th March 2.30pm NZ ….and arrive LA at 6.40 am Saturday 30th March before we set off!!)