Day 3: Friday, Feb 22, Auckland

This was in the Auckland Zoo. This guy's title is almost three lines long, and that's only because they got tired of chiseling and made the last three things initials -- "G.C.B. O.M. G.C.V.O." That means he was knighted, won the Order of Merit, and something else I couldn't figure out.

On Friday we wandered down to the quay and then took a bus to the Auckland Zoo. It got rave reviews; while I thought the display of NZ species was very good, I thought it was only so-so as a zoo as a whole. Part of this might be due to the fact that their red panda that I really wanted to see wasn’t on display for some reason. We saw kiwis of course, but we also saw taruana, which looks like a lizard (though is not technically a lizard), matures after 25-35 years, and lives to be 60-100 yrs old. The sex of its offspring depends on the temperature of the soil in which the eggs incubate. There were interesting bird species as well.

We took the bus back to town. We didn’t use the Auckland mass transit extensively, but the bus system was really nice. Each bus had an LCD screen that showed what looked like Google Maps with the bus’ position in real time and had dots for all of the stops.

After taking the bus back to town we wandered around to the Sky Tower. I think it might actually be the SKY Tower, as in SKY TV. It advertises that it is the “tallest tower” or the “tallest free-standing structure” in the southern hemisphere. That is particularly interesting because Sydney has a tower that is the “tallest building” in the southern hemisphere. If you stuck the two towers next to each other you would find that the “building” portion – i.e. the viewing deck and restaurant – is higher up in the Sydney tower, whereas NZ’s viewing deck/restaurant are lower but the needle-like tower on top makes it a taller total structure than Sydney’s. You can do a “tower jump” off NZ’s tower. The brochure makes it look like bungee jumping, but we saw some people do it and it’s really just a controlled free-fall. There are two guide wires from the tower to the base. The harness is suspended between the two of them. The attachment point on the harness is behind the person (meaning you fall skydive-style). Upon release the person just falls down, but it is obviously braked and gives you a gentle landing with no “bounce up.”

That night Auckland University was having a Chinese Lantern Festival. We went and nibbled from various street vendors, watched martial arts demonstrations, and listened to some Chinese opera. The guy who was narrating/announcing the rotating martial arts exhibits (put on by local martial arts schools) tried to spice things up by making jokes about what was going on. They were good-natured, but the funniest thing was the guy trying to make lame jokes while the demonstrators tried to go through their choreographed routines with the seriousness and dignity that goes with martial arts. The shows were a hit with the drunken guy sitting on the ground inside the rope fence, and he vociferous cheered on the performers.

We also saw a Red Bull car with the license plate WINGS and a rice rocket with the license plate COP ME.

We changed hostels and stayed Friday and Saturday nights at the Auckland YMCA. It was a great place with a pool table downstairs (albeit beat up) and a TV with rugby and cricket on. It really is fun to stay at the YMCA.

Don't. I'm not sure what, but just don't.