Rotorua,
North Island,
New Zealand
Friday, April 17, 2009
Jess here! This morning we got up fairly early to go to the National Aquarium. It was a cute place with very nice placards explaining what every fish was in each exhibit. They had many that were native to New Zealand that was of most interest to me. We got to see many sea horses and found out that they were abundant just off the coast of Napier. They also had very large lobster which they called incorrectly crayfish. They also had that weird grandpa shark (sevengill shark). There was also an exhibit about dinosaurs that were found in New Zealand. No one thought there were any dinosaurs in New Zealand but a housewife thought this wasn't true. So she went digging for many years and found many bones even two skulls. One of which was a large aquatic lizard and the other was of a large swimming dinosaur. She was a self-taught paleontologist and set up shop in her garage. After we left the aquarium we went to Marineland which is a park that now rescues injured marine life like penguins, sea lions, and sea birds. They had a couple of blind sea lions. One of the sea lions that was born there was trained to do cute tricks like blow kisses, shake hands, do a hand stand, and give her trainer a kiss on the lips. They also had a collection of sea gulls, gannets, cormorants, and blue penguins. They had a juvenile gannet that had a broken wing that Mom particularly fell in love with and of course the penguins. The blue penguin is the smallest species of any penguin. I had my picture taken with a special penguin named Alfred. He was blind in his right eye, missing his left, and his beak was completely shattered and misaligned. It made me sad to see him so decrepit but it was comforting to know that he was being well taken care of.
We went into town for lunch and afterwards into a very nice gallery. We made a few special purchases and then got on the road to Rotorua. It was a nicer drive because not as many curves and mountains and a change of scenery now with lots of large dark forests. As we approached Rotorua we saw some steam rising from the land out of geothermal pools. On the way we stopped at Huka Falls. It was a beautiful sight. The river was so powerful and the water was a gorgeous ice blue.
We arrived at the Rotorua Thermal Holiday Park during daylight hours for once and enjoyed a couple of relaxing hours before heading to the Maori concert and dinner we were attending that night. (See next entry for Maori concert and dinner)
