Wednesday
Sleeping in with Ro in the same room is an impossibility, so we were all up bright and early. Still, Mark was only able to mutter a few incomprehensible grunts until Sherry fixed him a cup of tea (all the hotel rooms in NZ have electric kettles). We checked out of the hotel, dropped our bags at the car, and walked down the street to grab some breakfast. There's no shortage of cafés in the area, so we stopped at the first one that looked good for some toasted bagel sandwiches and coffee.
The weather was perfect for our trip to the Auckland Zoo. Overcast and warm, but not hot enough to break a sweat (a good thing since we forgot our deodorant at home), with a bit of a cool breeze. While getting our tickets, Mark ran into a couple from Wilmington, NC (near where Sherry grew up). It is definitely a small world. The first exhibit we came to at the zoo was the kiwi house, and there were two lively kiwis bouncing around the dark enclosure. That was old hat to Ro, though, and he egged us on to bigger and better things.
Summer excursion
The zoo is one of the most progressive in the world, and the big, modern, cageless enclosures keep the animals about as happy as a zoo animal can be. There was a lot of publicity at the zoo on saving the orangutans from deforestation, referring to the movement in Australasia to stop using products made with non-sustainable palm oil. The zoo famously banned Cadbury chocolate (a ubiquitous Kiwi favorite) from its snack bars for that reason.
"Don't Palm Us Off"
Mark's favorite exhibit was the Sumatran Tigers, Sherry's was the noisy Siamang Gibbons, and Ro's the White Rhinos, but we probably spent the most time at the hippos, waiting for them to pop their heads out of the water. There was a little girl at the hippo exhibit who latched onto Sherry's leg, thinking Sherry was her mother. The terrified look on the toddler's face when her real mother walked by was priceless, as in, "If that's my mother over there, then whose leg am I hugging?"
Can we get some ice cream now?
Ro's wannabe sibling
We coaxed Ro into standing in line for the giraffe encounter with an ice cream. We got there 15 minutes early and were the first in line, but when it was finally time to hand-feed the giraffe, there was a good fifty people in the queue behind us. We each got a piece of celery to feed to it, which the giraffe would snake its long tongue around and then slurp up. Sherry was the first to go, then Ro, but he got a little scared when the big male giraffe swung its head towards him, so he just flung the piece of celery down on the balcony and backed away cautiously.
Eat here often?
In the Aussie Walkabout
Sherry wishes she could take back her decision to enter the extensive tunnels under the meerkat habitat, with ladders leading up to clear plastic domes for close viewing. In addition to encountering a rampaging
Tyrannosaurus Rex (i.e. an over-imaginative Japanese toddler), she managed to whack the top of her skull on a cement edge, giving her a nice goose-egg and causing her to see stars for at least five minutes! And if that weren't enough, Ro took a tumble down one of the ladders and hurt his shoulder. Mark suspected some of his tears were of the crocodilian persuasion, but since Ro was still crying after we left the tunnels Sherry had Mark take a look at the shoulder. Mark checked his range of motion, "Okay, Ro, put your hands behind your back...now behind your head...good, you're fine, let's go." As soon as Ro got official confirmation that nothing was broken, he was happily off and running again to see the sea lions.
Make way, mummy!
Ro's favorite part of the zoo had to be the Kidzone, where there was a huge Chinese dragon to climb on. He took to hiding in the dragon eggs, lying in wait for another child to come along and look inside. Then Ro would dart his head out, roar and scare the bejeezus out of them! Possibly a bit mean, but pretty darn funny for us to watch as we took a break from walking and snacked on hot chips. Ro did really well for most of the day, and we all had a great time, but he got a little whiny towards the end. Not coincidentally, that's when the sun came out and it started getting hot.
The hatchling with a tuatara
Ro was too comfy to bother posing
Sherry and Ro both fell asleep on the way home. Somehow we managed to avoid the worst of the usually punishing Auckland rush-hour traffic and made pretty good time. We stopped in Paeroa for dinner at the L&P Cafe & Bar. A family-oriented place, they had a small climbing frame in the courtyard so we sat outside and ate while Ro played with some other kids, occasionally coming back to our table to forage. He and Sherry had the pizza and pasta buffet, while Mark stuck with fish & chips, washed down with (of course) an L&P.
http://www.lpcafe.co.nz/home
Snoozing on the Southern Motorway
After dinner, Ro had a nice play at the park across the street. Another boy about 8 years-old showed up after a while, whose dad was in their rustic campervan in the carpark. After playing for a while, the boy nonchalantly wandered over to Sherry's handbag sitting on a picnic table and started looking through it! Sherry gave him the benefit of the doubt, figuring his eye must have been caught by Ro's dragon book, and she even offered to show it to him, but he didn't say anything and walked off sheepishly. There was an abandoned kids bicycle at the park, and we took the opportunity to try to teach Ro to ride without training wheels. It was less successful than we'd hoped. He seemed to think the only reason we held on to the seat was to push him, relieving him of the obligation to pedal!
Part of a photo series we've been compiling of lone shoes around NZ (Sherry's idea)
It doesn't matter if it's a girl's bike, keep pedalling!
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