Monkey poo and maxi pads.

July 18

Friday started out wet and chilly, and it was looking like plans for a trip to the zoo might have to be postponed. But by the time noon rolled around, the sky was clearing up and the zoo was a go. (This was, of course, after Jamie overslept, got lost in the woods on the way to catch her train, and was directed by an old man with one arm. But that’s her story to tell.)

When Jamie, Andrea and I were finally in the same place, we hopped a bus out to Newtoun Park and Wellington Zoo. The sun decided it did want to come out afterall, and our trip was actually pretty pleasant.

The zoo was a lot of fun. They had the usual lions, tigers (and bears, oh my!), giraffes, zebras, chimps, monkeys, and various birds and reptiles (though some were native to NZ). But they also had a lot of animals I’ve never seen before. First and foremost, they had kiwi birds! We saw a couple in this little hut that was pitch black save for a few infrared lights. You could see the birds hopping around in the underbrush. They’re much bigger than I pictured them being, and also much cuter.

We arrived at the zoo just in time for a kiwi talk, where a zoo keeper brought out Tahi, an apparently famous kiwi bird. Tahi only has one leg, and has a prosthetic (made by Weta Workshop) that he doesn’t like very much. He prefers to hop around on his one good leg and amuse spectators. I was upset I couldn’t get a decent picture of him (no flash cameras allowed), but it was still very cool to see one of the endangered birds up close.
Along with kiwis, we also saw a Malayan Sun Bear – the smallest bear in the world, and one that doesn’t hibernate. The one we saw also walked down stairs backwards, but I’m not sure if that’s true of all sun bears, or just this particular one. We also saw kangaroos and wallabies, but they didn’t appear very interested in humans.

I think my favorite animal of the day was the red panda. I’ve never seen one before, but I found the one I did get a good look at to be adorable. They don’t resemble pandas very much, but are apparently in the same family. They actually look more like foxes or raccoons. They scurry around and spend most of their time in trees, which was good for us because it meant we got to see them. Fun fact about red pandas – they’re endangered because they’re incredibly hard to breed. The females are only in heat one day out of the whole year!

Baboons, on the other hand, seem to be quite the opposite. We saw two baboons repeatedly having sex. (I say repeatedly because we weren’t allowed to leave until Jamie caught them at it on film.)

The monkeys here in general were slightly disgusting… We saw a female chimp (with a very cute baby) picking her butt and eating her own poo. Now if that’s not appetizing, I don’t know what is!

Along with the amusing animals (and perhaps as a testament to the general attitude of most New Zealanders), the zoo displayed a bunch of signs warning visitors about what not to do. They don’t sound too different from the “don’t feed the animals” signs you can find in the States, but what really made them stand out were the cartoons that accompanied each warning. My favorite (other than all of them that warned “If you feed the [insert animal here] it will get sick and may die.”) was this one that warned you’d fall in if you sat on the fence. Ha, I really wish we had things like this at home.

After the zoo, we stopped for dinner at Courtenay Place. We ate at the Hog’s Breath, which turned out to be both very good and very affordable. I think we’ll definitely be going back there in the future.

Jamie and I had planned to drag Andrea out with us that night, but she refused. Jamie and I ended up exploring on our own, and mostly went in and out of clubs to check out which ones seem interesting and which ones we wouldn’t really want to pay a cover to get into on a Saturday night. We found a few that seemed promising, especially a new three-story bar called Temperance. Not only is it a brewery and bar, but it’s also a dance club and projects rugby onto very large screens. I even got hit on by an old man while there, so it must be a good spot.

In between clubs, we ran into some New Zealanders standing in a doorway who waved us over. Or, rather, they waved Jamie over to ask her if she would have their babies. Haha. But they were only joking, and actually turned out to be quite interesting. One of them, Scott, had fallen while running in the subway, and had gashed open his elbow. He was holding a maxi pad to it, and asked us if we had any more. There was also Mark, who was very upset that Temperance wouldn’t let him in wearing tennis shoes, and Adrian, the one who took a liking to Jamie. But Adrian and Mark both disappeared, while Jamie and I stayed with Scott and talked football (or gridiron as he called it). He apparently is very into the NFL, and was naming all his favorite players. Then he asked us to go by him band-aides for his elbow. Which we did. But when we got back, he’d gone to get stitches. So we walked around with a $4 box of band-aides for the rest of the evening.

All in all though, I think it was a pretty successful Friday.