As I had stayed up last night to fix the blog and photo album, I slept in till about 9am or so. Of course, Tina was already up and had fed the lambs, so I sorted myself with some toast for breakfast - and of course a cup of tea!
The plan for the day was to go to Nga Manu Nature Reserve, to see some exotic birds native to New Zealand.
After dropping by a neeighbours to drop of something, we made our way to Waikanae and the reserve. Navigation was a little interesting as they are currently upgraded the road to 4 lane expressway, so we passed signs that said "Yes we are still open" and had an interesting maze to follow to get to the main car park!
We were greeted at the door by two very young ducklings, and then went on to the main area, where Tina became a perch for one of the Kakariki parrots. After we had looked at the Kakariki and Kereru, we went to the nocturnal area, while being followed by some hopeful ducks (hopeful that we were going to feed them), to see if we could see any Kiwi out and about, though all we saw were some rats (who had a great set up to run around it, various chambers and tunnels to run between), and some Moreporks.
By the time we exitted the building, the ducks outside had given up on us, and we went around the bush walk area. There was a great view from the viewing platform (31 steps up), and it was nice to see across the top of the forest canopoy with a sign saying what all the different trees were.
We made it back to the main entrance just in time to feed the eelse, so went to enjoy that. We were the only adults feeding the eels, but we didn't care!
By this time, we had forgotten about trying to go back to see the Kiwis as we were ravenous for lunch, so we headed in to Paraparaumu (fondly known by the locals as 'Pram') and enjoyed fish and chips from a local cafe.
The next stop was to pick up a water cylinder that Tina needed for her farm endeavours, and then we headed back to the ranch, where Tim, Tracey and their pre-toddler Emily, had decided to drop by after seeing us driving through Levin. That was a nice surprise, and we got entertained by Emily's antics, and went to feed the lambs.
It was now around 8pm, so TIm and Tracey stayed over and we all enjoyed a nice mexican/new zealand mix sort of dinner with salad and wraps.
Once all the dishes were done and I had completed my Japanese Kanji/Vocabulary reviews, it was definitely bed time, so I did that and quickly fell asleep.
At 5 past midnight, I woke up, feeling a little confused as it felt like the room was moving. I slowly started to realise that the room was in fact moving, it wasn't a tiredness symptom, and it kept going for quite a while.
Once I had realised it was an earthquake, I started to wonder if I should go to a door frame or not, but decided that since it had been tens of seconds already I was probably ok and it was nice and warm under the duvet anyway.
At that point the swaying got much stronger, and it felt like I was on some boat being tossed about on waves, so I looked around to try and figure out where the door was. I was looking on the wrong side of the bed though, and as the movement eased off, I saw torchlight at what I thought was the window, and heard Tina ask if I was already. I confirmed I was, and hopped out of bed and threw on some clothes.
My first stop was to search on google for New Zealand earthquakes, and quickly found the GeoNet NZ site which informed me that it was a 7.5 earthquake near Kaikoura.
Tina set up the radio, as there was no power, and we enjoyed a cup of tea, listening to the emergency broadcast. We could feel several after shocks after the main event, some of them quite large.
To start with there were no tsunami warnings, but at about 1am there was one for the Kaikoura area and eeast coast, which was then expanded to cover the east coast of both Islands.
By around 2am, the movement seemed to have settled down a bit, though we were still aware of after shocks, and GeoNet was reporting lots of events every few minutes, but we decided that it was probably safe enough now to go back to bed, and we'd find out what the real impact was in the morning, since it was the middle of the night and dark.
I am pretty sure I felt more aftershocks as I tried to drift to sleep but it's hard to tell, as it could have just been the sea-legs phenomenon that you get after being on a boat all day. Either way it didn't take me long to get back to sleep before waking at around 8.30am