Many of the really cool New Zealand animals come out at night so we did a night tour. We found more weta.
And geckos.
But the most important of all were the Kiwi. We saw 3 wild kiwi that night. The first was almost right away on the walk.
One walked right past us on the path and almost pecked Matt’s foot. Then after it got some food it ran off back down the path across the bridge. They look really funny when running. Kerri really liked the kiwis.
Millions of years ago New Zealand broke away from Australia and submerged below the ocean. Now Zealandia is a predator free sanctuary on the north island right in the middle of Wellington. This area was undeveloped because it used to be dammed and was the water storage site for the city.
It is full of tuis, which are incredibly noisy birds.
With really weird songs full of clicks and other un-birdlike noises.
Instead you can find lots of New Zealand animals. This is a Wellington green gecko. It is blue on the inside of its mouth.
This is a baby comerant (Shag)
These ones are still small enough that they need to be fed and don’t look like an adult trying to eat from another adult.
Like this lazy chick.
Looks like one is swallowing the other. The chick is actually grabbing food out.
Sometimes this requires extensive searching.
This little on isn’t quite as needy yet.
While these ones are still waiting for dinner to come home.
This is a Takahe. They are endangered (like most birds in New Zealand). It lives in the mountains but got to move somewhere warmer after outliving its breeding age.
They have very strong beaks and the staff seem to all have stories of bruised fingers when they have to add the extra feed to the feeders.
They also have large feet which can scratch pretty bad, so we kept our distance.
There was a sanctuary within the sanctuary to keep out the mice since the predatory fence was found to let baby mice in. They did this so they could bring tuatara back to the mainland.
The old ones have beads in their spines to identify them. They live at far colder temperatures than other reptiles.
While looking at the tuatara we found a stick bug not blending in with the fence. He was dropped there by a bird earlier in the day.
There were also many very noisy Kaka parrots.
There were many other birds that we saw. Many of which I cannot remember their species.
This one we do remember. It was the previously critically endangered black robin. Thanks to all the conservation efforts it has come back from only 5 individuals left.
They also had some spots where the wetas like to hide during the day. We found and disturbed one tree weta.
We took the ferry between the south island and the North island at the crack of dawn.
There were lots of albatrosses and seabirds flying and floating near the boat. but not enough light to take pictures of them.
So you get pictures of rocks, which held still better.
And the South Island, which also holds still. Most of the time. It actually moves around more than most other islands because there are a lot of faults nearby. But it stayed pretty still while we were on it.
These are the pancake rocks.
They look pretty cool.
But they look absolutely nothing like pancakes.
We’re not sure who named them, but they were obviously sadly deprived of pancakes.
We took a break from driving to have fun in the fun house. Matt held up a building for a while.
Then we went into the maze where we had to get to the four different coloured towers.
It is a pretty big maze with several bridges crossing over the different sections.
We traded off who was the leader, although Matt was lost most of the time.
Eventually Kerri led the way out so we could go into the perspective house. The whole building was tilted so objected rolled uphill. It was very disorienting as there were no windows so there was nothing to ground you to the correct horizon.
There was also several perspective paintings. Here Kerri was hanging out in a replica Roman toilet. Although she did sit on an actual on in Turkey.
We took the obligatory giant Kerri shot. Matt looked tiny sitting down.
