August 11th, 2010

This morning, my arms’ nerves were still achey and burny, and the soreness had travelled up into my shoulders and neck. This had caused me to clench my teeth in my sleep, so I also had a headache. I took some ibuprofen and slept in until 9am (after 4pm home time). My arms felt much better, but my head still hurt. Rachel and I had some coffee (I hypothesized that perhaps I had a caffeine headache, since at home I normally have coffee around 4pm), took some hot showers, and eventually I took some more ibuprofen. My headache finally went away roundabouts the time we rented a car.

We got a tiny Hyundai from McDonald’s car rental for $45 NZD/day + petrol, which includes free hotel pickup and airport dropoff!

The car handles really well and is perfect for two young women and their shopping to fit into. The car rental is also courtesy of Rachel’s mom, since we figured it’d be cheaper than taxiing everywhere. The lady who rented us the car was unbelievably perky, laughed a lot, and had a very VERY thick Kiwi accent. She was a gas, as they say.

Quick side note! There is a sticker on our motel window that says “Coated with Argon – It’s A Gas!” which made me lol. Additionally, we saw a nerdy NZ joke on a computer store billboard – “We’ve got more RAM than a sheep station.” I lol’d at that, too, but buggered if I know what a sheep station is.

We headed out to the local shopping mall to pick up some cough syrup (both Rachel and I have scratchy throats) and breakfast foods. I ended up buying sweaters, which are HOLY GOD WONDERFULMAZING. So warm! So soft! So on sale for decent prices! Also got gifts for people! Forgot to buy groceries and a toothbrush, though. Without realizing that last note, Rachel and I went back to the motel room to change clothes and grab my camera before we embarked on our adventure for the evening – the Willowbrook Wildlife reserve.

We got rather lost on the way there. I had a slightly crap tourist map, and many of the streets in CC have multiple names depending on which intersection you’re at – dear god, I almost ended this sentence with a preposition. It ended up being worth it though, because the Wildlife Reserve was seriously the most amazing time I’ve ever had. Like, ever. We booked a dinner and tour, and since we arrived at 4:30, we got to explore the zoo area as well. I fear this might end up being my highlight of the whole trip, and it was only one day in!

Immediately after leaving the lobby, there’s a pond/river area, with some platforms leading down right to the water. We bought some food for the ducks, and also for the eels. Yep, eels. Long-finned eels, to be precise, which can live up to 80 years and grow to 3 meters long. They can leave the water to get to their prey…which we found out when we fed them, and they started crawling up the dock to get to us! Luckily, at the time we had no idea that they had razor-sharp teeth, or we might have been a little more frightened.

We also fed the ducks, who were rather grabby. There were regular ducks like we have back at home, and there were also white ducks and black ducks with greenish sheen. There was one particular white duck-duck who liked to stick his head up over the dock to get the food we’d dropped, and he followed us along the river for at least two enclosures worth. I say enclosures because there were wire “doors” that separated one from another, but it was incredibly open-air, and in most cases there was little more than a short fence or a stream between us and the animals. Sometimes even less, as I’ll get to later.

We passed some deer, who were very curious about us, coming right up to the edge of the bank to look at us. I got quite a few good shots of them. We then passed on and came by a grey goose who had an absolutely lime-green bill. I couldn’t get a shot that captured the colour properly, try as I might, but it was electric neon lime green. Quite impressive. From there we got to the best part of the excursion.

“Please stay on the paths to give our wallabies some room,” the sign read. I sighed and nodded, of course the cute animals are sought after and probably quite shy and/or

irritated with humans. We entered the area, and I pulled out my camera to take a photo of the three wallabies to our right. As I was lining up the shot, one of them hopped right past the fence to us. It looked pointedly at the gate, and then began investigating us. Rachel pulled out some of the feed we’d bought from the gift shop, and dropped one or two on the ground. This was evidently what the wallaby had been waiting for, and he eagerly snatched up the food and was quite still while I stole a quick pat. We then tried to see if he’d eat out of our hands, which he was happy to do! I fed a wallaby! I got to scritch his little head, and he licked my fingers when the food was all gone. He then took quite an interest in my shoes and socks, and snuffled all about my legs, which was SO TICKLY. Eventually he hopped off, and Rachel and I squeed our way through the rest of, well, the whole evening, really!

There was also a mother wallaby with a joey close to the fence. She didn’t come forth to be petted, but I’m really surprised that she was so close to us. We didn’t get to see the joey, but it was doing quite a bit of moving in the pouch, so it was probably nearly ready to come out. I got video of that, as well!

We moved on to the next enclosure, which had super-fluffy geese. They had a feather deformity that made them all foofy, and were apparently descendent of Russian Fighting Geese! Possibly the coolest geese ever. There was also an ostrich, who was keen on us as well. At this point I began to suspect that since it was a cool winter day, there hadn’t been much business, and that additionally, we were exploring near feeding time. Every single animal came right up to the fence to investigate us. Speaking of fences, I gratefully mention that the ostrich was behind 6-7′ of chicken wire attached to posts, rather than a more flimsy barrier. There was a hole in the fence through which the ostrich could definitely have stuck his head and bitten us, but he didn’t seem aware of it. He did seem aware of the fact that we had food, however, and made it quite obvious that the fence was the only thing between us and total annihilation.

Thus followed the most fun part of the trip, and I use trip in an ironic sense here, because that is what I did. While backing up to get a good shot, I neglected to note that there wasn’t, in fact, room to back up. I stepped on a log, and began to topple. To regain my footing, I stepped on another part of the log. I probably looked hilarious, arm pinwheeling (the other arm held out at bay to save my camera), tripping all other the place. Rachel attempted to catch me, but alas only managed to steer me clear of the brush behind me. I landed – HARD – on another log (with conviniently pokey-outty bits sticking straight upward!) and some leaves and dirt. This fall was lucky in many ways. The first was my camera never even touched the ground.  Admittedly, that is mostly because I consciously sacrificed my ability to break my own fall in order to keep it up

(I was terrified I was going to land in water). The second was that my pristine white skirt was not torn, nor stained, nor even marked. The third is that, while I incurred quite the bruise on my right thigh, no skin was broken, and also it looks AWESOME now. I asked Rachel to take my camera, assured her that I was fine but that my leg had that “takes a minute to feel anything but then hurts like a bitch for a minute” sort of pain, and then sat for a while clutching my thigh and going “Oh god oh god ARGHARGH.”

Momentarily, I stood up, brushed myself off, and we both had a good laugh about it. I did end up getting the shot I wanted, as well, which helped. We continued on to the aviary. I got some good shots of some lovely birds, but the most interesting of the bunch was a golden-crested cockatoo. They’re common as in Australia, anyway (being about the equivalent of crows in Wisconsin), not sure about New Zealand, but this one was a treasure. He climbed along the wire to get a good look at us. “Hello!” we called. “Can you talk?” Rachel asked, “I know you’re the type that can!” He made some various noises, did a few dances, and showed us his crest. Then he said, “Do you want a biscuit?” We looked closely, in case we’d misheard. “Do you want a biscuit?” he asked again. I got a video of us figuring out what it was he was saying. We kept talking to encourage him to speak, but unfortunately end up drowning him out a few times. Ah well. It seemed like he actually knew two biscuit-related phrases: “Do you want a” and “Would you like a.”

We got momentarily distracted by the ruffed lemurs in the next cage over, and he followed us along the wire. “He’s following us!” Rachel alerted me. “Of course he is,” I replied, “He wants a biscuit.”

At that point we realised we were going to be late for the guided tour, so we skipped the farm animals section and hurried back to the lobby. The guided tour was led by a young girl with a seriously cute accent, and was going to take us to a part of the reserve that we hadn’t gone through yet. We began in the same place, though, and it was here that we learned the interesting facts about the long-finned eels.

“They are also slimy,” she concluded, “Because it helps them to keep their skin.”

I asked if I could touch one, and she said, “Absolutely! Just wet your fingers first!”

It was, indeed, slimy. It felt like wet mochi, or like an overripe wet peach. The guide asked if anyone else wanted to touch them, and the rest of the group, which was predominantly Asian, shied away. I turned to Rachel. “You want to?” I asked, and she thought for a moment and then conceded. The wet mochi descriptor was hers, in fact. After both of us had, one of the others gathered their courage and tried, as well.

We then went on to the Kea bird enclosure. Kea birds are curious and friendly (although they were mostly interested in our guide, as she had honey), and have the intelligence of a 6-year-old human! They’re also quite cute, and love treats. One bird in particular kept tugging at the guide’s pant leg in search of more honey. I got excellent footage of one or two of them. Past the Kea, we came across some absolutely hideous pigs called Kunekune. They no longer live in the wild, and are only kept as pets (in fact, the couple at the reserve had just given birth, and six piglets were for sale!). I couldn’t comprehend why, until I googled pictures of them. During infancy and adolescence they are freaking adorable, like fat kitties. Of course, in adulthood they look like giant pig bats with wattles and tusks and porcupine-like coat. I guess it might be worth it if you bond with them during their adorableness.

We then came to the advertised highlight of the tour, the kiwi enclosure. I didn’t get a single good photo of the kiwi, despite my camera being good in low-light settings, but they were each about the size of a canteloupe, and were quite cute. The first pair we saw upon entering involved one climbing on top of the other one. I instinctively whispered, “I think these two are mating.” The Japanese man next to me nodded and agreed. The guide then mentioned that no, in fact, all the kiwi in this enclosure were female. They were just…trying to mate. Rachel and I giggled and made some lesbian kiwi remarks as the one stood effectively on the other’s head.

We saw at least one more instance of lesbian kiwi birds before we left the enclosure. The Japanese man, who was chatting to the tour guide, said, “Now they start happy time!” I was a pinnacle of self-control, and did not burst out laughing.

The rest of the tour was mostly routine, although we did see Morepork owls, which tickled the Terry Pratchett fan part of me. Then it was time for dinner. By this point,

Rachel and I were positively glowing with happiness. We had gotten to touch EELS and we had WALLABY SPIT on our hands and this was the BEST DAY EVER and even without dinner was utterly worth the ticket price. We washed our hands (duh), and proceeded to the dining area, where we were presented with a choice of either sitting by the fireplace, or sitting by the window (where there were deer). We chose the window. I got a cute shot of Rachel looking at her menu while a white stag in the background looks about inquisitively.

Dinner itself was amazing. It was a four course meal: taster, soup, main dish, and dessert. The taster was a pork wonton with chili sauce. I don’t much care for pork, nor chili sauce, and Rachel and I basically just ate the shell and left the meat in the dish. I also drank half the bottle of water they gave us, because it was so spicy. We waited for our soup. As we were doing so, the server came by with some drinks and said, “The taster wasn’t cooked properly, so these are to make up for it. I wish I could say it’s the chef’s first day…” We insisted that it was fine, but accepted the drinks nevertheless. They were non-alcoholic elderberry fizzy drinks with kiwi slices in them. We can’t recall what else he said was in them, but they were quite tasty.

The soup was amazing as well. It was supposedly sweet potato soup, but it was really more like a butternut squash soup. But it was warm and creamy and buttery with hints of nutmeg and spices…absolutely amazing, even if I don’t usually care for squash soups! To add, um…what’s the opposite of insult to injury? Compliment to…uh…Cure? Anyway, to make things even better, our server went outside between courses and threw food out by our window so more deer would come up for us to watch! I grabbed my camera and stood to get better shots, and he gestured for me to come outside, so I did. I took some dark and blurry photos, and muttered something about not wanting to use flash.

“It’s fine,” he said, “They’re used to it, and besides, they’re mostly smellers anyway. Would you like to feed them?”

We did, in fact, want to feed them, and feed them we did! I also petted one and scratched it by its ears. After that, we ran back inside, washed our hands, and then sat back down to wait for the main course. I’d ordered the Chicken Filo/Phyllo, with cream cheese and roasted veggies, and Rachel got the beetroot and spinach risotto. They were both amazing. Seriously, the best meal I’ve ever had outside of Waves, I think. It was fresh ingredients which were well-cooked, perfectly spiced, and excellently complementing to one another. I normally loathe chicken in restaurants, but this was like…roasted or braised or possibly smoked in some kind of deliciousness. It was like chickenbacon. Chickon. I nearly died of happy. We saved half the entrees so we could have dessert.

We both got the kiwi pavlova for dessert, which was creamy and soft and delicious, and by the end of the meal we were fit to burst, both from delicious food, and from happiness! We heartily thanked our server and the tour booking lady for a fantastic evening, and drove home. We, in fact, did NOT get lost on the way home! We were quite proud, especially Rachel. We picked up some groceries on the way, and remedied my lack of a toothbrush, and also picked up coffee, milk, kiwifruit, and toast makings.

When we arrived home, Bart, the hotel kitty, was hanging out outside our apartment. We’d bought some kitty treats for him, and gave him one. He wouldn’t eat it until I dropped it on the ground, silly cat, and even then he seemed to have trouble with it (he dropped it and came back to it twice before he finished it – I wonder if perhaps he’s older than he looks). He also walked into the apartment a few times and marked everything, but soon he’d had enough, and we shut the door behind him, We then internetted until we could internet no longer, and fell asleep.

FYI -  if you’re interested in more pictures from the trip, do check out my Flickr account!