Orakei

....this time they were at the aquarium, so it was "cheating" but a fun day out was had by all 3 of us anyway! We spent the day at Kelly Tarlton's Sea Life Aquarium. Kelly T was a diving pioneer who, amongst many other achievements, invested the prescription specs diving mask. Having travelled 4307km (approx. 2700 miles) in it, we returned our hire car this morning. We then travelled in style to the aquarium on the free "shark bus" from the city centre. Immediately after the entrance was a reconstruction of Scott's Antarctic Hut - as a bit of a polar enthusiast, this was one of my favourite sections - and no doubt the closest I'll ever come to Antarctic exploration (though hopefully one day we will get to visit the great continent itself...). Continuing the Antarctic theme, next we saw the King and Gentoo penguins, which all 3 of us loved. The King penguins even had 2 chicks - like large fluffballs, one even looked bigger than its parents - you can kind of see why early explorers thought the chicks were a separate species! We also discovered that Solana weighs about the same as an adult King penguin. We saw plenty of other aquatic life, including fish, sharks, eels, octopus, lobsters, starfish and seahorses. We also got to design our own fish, scan them and release into a virtual "aquarium" - it was designed for kids but I think Laura and I enjoyed that at least as much as Solana! Afterwards, we has a wander round the city centre and had (a somewhat disappointing!) dinner in a harbourfront restaurant.Read more