Auckland Zoo - Apr 17, 2010

Disappointed with not seeing any kiwis in the bird sanctuary in Wellington, we decided to take an even easier approach and visited the Auckland Zoo. The zoo is pretty big with a great mix of animals you'd expect to see. We spent quite a bit of time in the pitch-black kiwi enclosure watching a couple of the little birds dig through the leaves and dirt in search of food. We tried to take some pictures, but it was just too dark.


Luckily Jesse used his computer skills to enhance the photo so you can see what they look like in normal lighting. L&P or Lemon and Paeroa is a soft drink that started just down the highway in Paeroa, but it's now manufactured by Coca-cola. It's the quintessential kiwi beverage (since the beer isn't very good) with the slogan - "World Famous in New Zealand."

The zoo had a great mixture of animals, but nothing really out of the ordinary. There were lions, giraffes and seals, but the penguin exhibit was being renovated, so no luck there. Oh well, we plan to make a trip to the South Island next year to see them in the wild!

Wellington, New Zealand - April 2 to 5, 2010

We spent Easter long weekend in Wellington. We didn't really believe people when they said it's windy, they weren't joking!

We got to the airport Friday afternoon and caught a bus into town. We stayed at a great hostel downtown. We spent Friday evening wandering around the city we made our way down the popular Courtenay and Cuba streets. We wanted to check out a couple bars, but since it was good Friday they coudnl't serve alcohol until midnight! We wandered around until about 11:30 and called it a night. We had a big day planned for Saturday.


We got up early and went for groceries across the street from the hostel. We made some breakfast and started our day. We walked along the waterfront and made our way to the Parliament buildings. We checked out Old St. Paul's Church and had a picnic in the Botanic Gardens.









The Beehive (Parliament Building):






Jesse still doesn't want to believe that bananas grow upside down...



We spent the afternoon touring through Zealandia. It's a protected nature reserve that's home to quite a few near-exinct species of birds. We went mostly because we wanted to see some kiwis, only to be told they're nocturnal... Not sure how we miss that, haha. We weren't very impressed with the park. It was nice, but definitely not worth the $28 admission! We only ended up seeing a handful birds; we should have just went for a hike!







We went back to the hostel and made some supper. Wellington is supposedly famous for all it's cafes, so after supper we went out for some coffee. We wandered back and forth down Courtenay and Cuba for over an hour and couldn't find anything! We finally threw in the towel and stopped in a starbucks.

We planned to check out a couple bars after the coffee. We had seen a few throughout the day that we wanted to check out. Jesse was hungry so he grabbed a kebab on our way. While he was eating, we noticed that packs of people were clearing out of all the bars. It was midnight and all the bars had to kick everyone out because it was now Easter Sunday! We were foiled again!!

Sunday it was rainy all day so we didn't get up to too much. We went to the theatre and watched a couple movies (Alice in Wonderland and the Bounty Hunter). We ate supper at the hostel and ended up watching another movie that evening (Shark vs Eagle). Not exactly what we thought we'd be doing while visiting Wellington, but we didn't have much else to do.

Is that? ....
Monday morning we got up early and did some shopping. Then we spend the afternoon at Te Papa Museum. We underestimated how big it was and didn't have enough time to see it all! We spent a couple hours there before we had to head back to the airport and really enjoyed it.



The only Colossal Squid on display in the world: