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Today was our last full day in New Zealand. But you won’t get any tears from us! We’ve had a wonderful time but we are READY to come home.
Today we went to Kelly Tarlton’s Antarctic Encounter and Underwater World. It was a combination of a museum, discovery center, zoo, and Sea World. There was a moving walkway passing through a huge transparent tunnel (like in the Detroit zoo) which went through a shark tank and other separate tanks of tropical fish. We watched a show on the stingrays and watched the trainer feed them, including their most famous resident, a 550lb 41-year-old stingray named Phoebe. We took a snow cat ride (OK so it was automated and on a track) and saw up close the colony of Gentoo and King penguins in their own world of snow and ice. They really take care of the animals there. Each section of animals are in controlled environments that have computer-run light schedules, temperature, feeding times, food types, etcetera to mimic the wild. This way the penguins, for example, breed and molt at expected times. It was a really COOL place.
Afterwards we drove around, exploring the peninsula that the exhibit
was on and then we headed back into Devenport. We shopped for a while and then headed back to the B&B. We packed our suitcases and carry-ons and organized everything. The owner’s cat came in through our door to the veranda and she soon was sleeping on my pillow. We continued to pack and weigh our suitcases, which is fun since their scale is in Kilograms.
We left for dinner and began trying to choose where to go. We stopped to look at a menu at a Mexican restaurant called Los Incas and a Mexican guy came out and started talking to us and then he started talking to us in Spanish. So I answered in Spanish and after a while I started answering his Spanish questions with English answers as my mom had no idea what was going on. We told him we were going to look around some more but that we might be back. After out of ear-shot, mom told me she didn’t want to go back because it creeped her out and there was NO one else there. So we found another restaurant called The Patriot that we ended up staying at. Mom got a
burger that was LITERALLY 8 inches in diameter (she measured).
When we got back, I unlocked our door on the veranda and out dashed Missy, the owner’s cat. I had locked her in our room on accident. Oops. So then a South African couple we met here were cracking up in THEIR accent and the owner of the B&B who’s German was going on and on in HER accent about how she couldn’t find Missy earlier and was wondering where she had gone and all I could think of was the Mexican guy earlier who would speak in Spanish and yet still say New Zealand-type things like, “no worries”. We sure have met a lot of interesting people here!
Ashley
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