Travis Wetlands

Ōruapaeroa/Travis Wetland is a fantastic inner city adventure, it is the largest wetland in Christchurch with an area of 56.5 hectares, and is unique in the fact that it is situated in an urban area. It has lots to see and do with a tower to climb, hides to spy birds from, and wetlands alive with bird life. It makes for a great wee adventure for kids and kids at heart.

We went to check out Travis Wetlands, we had heard a lot about the place from friends that had been to check it out and loved it so we could not wait to explore.
We had printed off the Kiwi Guardian map to take with us before we left, but there is a nice big board with a good map on it you could take a photo of if you wanted to.
As we made our way around it was really easy to find where to go everything was really well marked. We checked out the information panels about the birds then headed off on our walk.

The wetlands was beautiful!! you can see all the hard work that has gone in to the planting and maintaining of the land. There was beautiful plants and lots of birds every where you looked.
As we walked around we pasted 3 school groups out exploring and doing class work, which was awesome to see it been used so much.
We found a neat look out tower you could head up and look out across the wetlands, the view was impressive.

Half of the walk around is on really well built boardwalks, you could easily push a child around in a pram or let a wee one cruse on their balance bike.
About 3/4th the way around we finally found the Kiwi Guardian Post !!!

We carried on around the rest of the wetlands back to the start, along the way we watched more of the beautiful birds life that is abundant their.

Close to where we started the track we came across a very cool bird lookout hut, where we sat and watched the birds for a bit. Marcus loved this, we wished we had brought his bird books with him.
All up it took us about 1hr to walk around the wetlands, that included exploring a bit and bird watching.
You could definitely take a bite to eat and stop more often taking it all in, if you took some bird and bug books with you it would be a perfect spot to do some spotting.

We were super impressed with how clean, tidy and well maintained the whole area is, the pride and passion that has gone in to the place shows.
I would definitively put this walk on your to do list especially in the summer months, it is well worth the stroll.