Wellington Zoo....

This past week NZ celebrated the national holiday ANZAC Day (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps). It would be similar to Memorial Day or Veteran's Day in the US. We got the day off, a Wednesday, which made for an interesting, bisected week. New Zealanders take their days off seriously so we followed suit and walked to the Wellington Zoo. There we met a wide variety of critters including the kiwi! We've been wanting to see one since we arrived in NZ and finally, this past week, we saw the elusive NZ icon. I'd love to say that we have a picture to share but, alas, kiwis are nocturnal and extremely shy. For this reason they are housed in a special enclosure lit by low, red light. While other people were loud and obnoxious and wondered why they couldn't catch a glimpse of these NZ natives, we waited until said people left the enclosure to see two kiwis emerge from the bushes right in front of us!!! More than anything we were struck by how big they were. If you google 'kiwi' and peruse the images you would think that these flightless birds are quite small, like the size of a softball. In reality, the ones we saw were more the size of a rugby ball (ok, that's about the size of an American football). So just imagine a football with a long, pointy beak and two skinny legs. Got that image in your mind? Then you've got a kiwi! :)

Giddy, after seeing the kiwi, we explored the remainder of the zoo. Below are some of the creatures we met along the way.

Kunekune.

Otters.

Sun bear.

Red panda. My personal favorite.

In your face giraffe.

'Roo.

One of the zoos function venues.

The only disappointment was that we didn't see any blue penguins. They were the first enclosure you come to upon entering the zoo but those little birds were nowhere to be seen. We guessed they were probably resting in their box nests and even stopped back to check a couple times but to no avail. We're hoping that we'll get to see then next time we visit. In addition, we're waiting to see them on the harbor beach where they've been known to come ashore to nest. Fingers crossed!!