Auckland Zoo

February 4

Sam:

Before leaving our campsite we cleaned up everything and packed our clothes because we were leaving our camper today. We drove to Britz to drop off our camper and then called an Uber to take us to our hostel. It was called Haka Lodge and it’s right downtown.

Charlotte:

Then we went to go explore the neighborhood. We went into a park through a mall, where we saw lots of palm trees. It also had a really cool park with great climbers that I played on for a while.

When we got hungry, we found a restaurant called Uncle Man’s that has a high rating on TripAdvisor. It is a Malaysian restaurant. We all really liked our food. Sam and I shared chicken satay (grilled chicken on skewers) and roti planta (grilled flatbread with butter and a curry dipping sauce). The chicken came with little rice cubes that were delicious! Dad ordered Nasi Goreng with chicken, prawns, and fish. Nasi means rice. Mom chose Mee Goreng with chicken. Mee means egg noodles. Goreng is the spices or special sauce, I think.

After supper, we went back to the hostel so that we could do laundry.

February 5

Sam

Today we went to the Auckland Zoo, and we saw a ton of cool animals, such as the Galapagos tortoise, meerkats, lemurs, and many more!

The meerkat exhibit was two parts with a tunnel under the path to travel from one to the other and mom got a hilarious picture of one smiling at her.

The lions were lazy looking to all those who didn’t see them eat, but when they ate, it was so vicious! They tore apart the rabbit’s heads the zookeeper hid around their enclosure within five seconds. She explained to us that they hide treats to keep the lions active and using all of their senses.

The Galapagos tortoises were a lot bigger than I expected them to be. They were almost the size of Charlotte! But since they are tortoises, they were still pretty slow.

We were very excited to see the kiwis because we didn’t see any in the wild. The kiwis were in a darker area because they are nocturnal. We went to a presentation where we got to hold one of their HUGE eggs and learn more about them. The zoo has a special program that is helping more kiwis survive in the wild. Because of predators, only 10% of baby kiwis were making it to maturity (18 months). Now, with the special program, 65% are surviving. It’s a big success.

A brolga looks like a flamingo except it is white with a red patch on its head and in the enclosure, there was the cutest baby brolga I had ever seen. Okay, so it was the only baby brolga I’d ever seen, but it was really adorable. It was the same colour as it’s parents but was super fluffy and small.

The spider monkeys were all on an island covered with food and were all working together to get the food and distribute it amongst themselves. There were over ten monkeys in the group and were grooming and climbing everything they could.

Charlotte:

We also saw cotton-topped tamarins. They were so small and adorable. There was even a mom with two babies. Like the name of them days, they have a fluffy head that looks like cotton.

The flamingos were beautiful. There were lots of them. There was a funny one that had his leg wrapped up all wrong.

I loved the lemurs, too! They had such long, furry trails. I named one Casey.

We also got to see Keas close up. There were three of them. We went to a zookeeper talk about them. We learned that they are as smart as a four-year old child. They all jumped from rock to rock on command for a treat. The youngest one was really cheeky because he kept stealing the treats.

There were so many amazing animals, and it wasn’t even that big of a zoo!

We went to the gift shop and we saw so many cute stuffies and toys. Sam and I each got a kiwi figurine (we got different ones). Mom surprised Dad with a keychain of a sulphur-crested cockatoo (so he can remember Rocky). Then we got an Uber back to the hostel, chilled for a while, got some pizza, and watched some TV.