Day 24, 12/17/2011:
As much as I was beginning to feel like a globe trotter, honestly our arrival in New Zealand was a relief. We lingered in the new Te Wao Nui exhibit, a special conservation area for New Zealand own species at the Auckland Zoo. Maori artwork is featured heavily in the six sections of the Te Wao Nui exhibit, and it was easy to spend most of a day here. We had heard of the Acacia Restaurant and Garden Bar from the Food Network and weren't disappointed by the human sized chess set.
We've been on such a run since Cairo, traveling the breadth of half the globe and into both hemispheres, that truly I'm beginning to feel lost. One day it's warm and balmy, the next cold and rainy. Right now it's warm but not hot. Sunny but with enough clouds in the sky to be pretty. And no rush. No flights until tomorrow morning, which means a 2 night stay for us. We really needed the break here.
Day 25, 12/18/2011:
Fiji Island. A tropical paradise like no other. One of my favorite books growing up was Dove by Robin Lee Graham (apparently a new version with a second writer was published in 1991, but the original was done back in the 70's). It's a story of a young man who sails around the world in his 24' sailboat. Anyway his writing of his stay in Fiji has always stayed with me. Now my wife wasn't sure what to expect of Fiji, but she was delighted by the wooden walkway through the rain forest exhibits at the Kula Eco Park. Most of the animals are birds, reptiles and insects, which reflects the fact that except for the fruit bat, Fiji has no naturally occurring land-living mammals. This zoo seems more focused on preserving the increasingly endangered local species than providing exotic entertainment from far off lands, and that makes it even more remarkable as it is a remarkable zoo!
