Tomorrow, We Hike!

Things in New Zealand have been really nice. Auckland was a great city to spend the weekend in, and now we are hanging out with a native that I met back in Montana a few years ago. Her name is Raquelle Devine, and she’s an incredible resource here and all in all, an amazing woman. She picked us up in the city today and took us to her home, which would have been plenty generous of her, but there’s so much more.

She took us around her amazing home town and to an incredible place, to see a wildlife sanctuary and some rare and incredible birds, which also happened to be next to a gorgeous beach. We are so lucky for her company. She knows a lot about native species here, even showed us a plant we can eat. The forest here is like nothing I have ever seen before.

This bird is extremely rare.  The Takahe, which were nearly driven to extinction and now only have 300 living. Uncle Mark, I thought of you so much in this bird paradise!

This is Raquelle and Craig walking around on the beach. So incredible to be near the ocean. It’s making me realize the importance of water. More on that later.

Raquelle is up to an incredible purpose these days, putting together a non-prophet organization to help monitor and control the plastics in the ocean. We learned a lot from her today, and she is truly a warrior for a good cause. It feels good to get to talk openly about the things that are impacting our planet and how much action we need to take right now! I am so appreciate of her. Please check out her mission at algalita.org.

Tomorrow we take a bus halfway up, and then hitch the other half of the way to the cape. So we have high hopes that the hike starts tomorrow. Thank you all for the support, we can’t wait to start walking.