This was a temporary exhibit. We spent way too much time on this interesting subject.
I just feel lucky I don’t run into almost any of these things — except mosquitoes!
Creepy!
We didn’t spend much time here. All country’s war museums look the same.
The lower jaw bone of a sperm whale. Not THAT’S interesting.
This elephant is a real stuffed animal that used to be in their zoo. The moas roamed the earth only 400 years ago! And since we may not see penguins, we wanted out photo with at least a statue of them.
I love columns and marble and sculptures!
A real mummy body in here.
This was petrifying. We were in a room as if it was someone’s living room with a picture window looking out to the ocean when an earthquake happens.
Click
A bucket list item that will not probably happen. I want to burn my tennis shoe in the moving lava of a volcano. This will have to be close enough.
The three e-bikers weren’t back for dinner, so Jane and I had a delish bento box and seaweed salad. Maybe about 6 bucks.
Jane and I were HAPPY to have missed this 20 mile e-bike ride. They came home with their faces and top of their hands very sunburned. But I would have loved to climb this tree. Lesa and Janice were at the Sky Tower for dinner. Waaaaaaay up at the top.
We hiked up and down gravel paths to see the flora and fauna of the area. They love their silver fern — it looks like a normal fern, but when you bend the stalk backwards, it’s silvery. We took a wrong turn and added steps to our walk. Needless to say, I was tired. I’m blaming it on jet lag.
Again!! Really! Do they need it so long to steady themselves?
Enjoying the heat — looks like this will be the last of it — especially when we head south — toward Antarctica.
If you note our names Lesa, Liz, Linda Jeanne, Janice and Jane, they alll involve L’s and J’s. So the group decided to all be “Jeans”. There was Norma Jean, Bobby Jean, Betty Jean, and even Blue Jean. And all we did was call each other by these names; and then we decided to exchange some of our names.
At one point someone erroneously called Constance, our Tour Guide, Candice. Swear to God, even on the last day one of us called her Candice. It was terribly embarrassing that 5 grown woman cannot get the correct name of a very polite and sweet person who simply wanted to be called by her own name!
We were having so much fun with the ridiculous game, it often got to a fever pitch. I swear that several hours later Constance announced that we would be getting a different Tour Guide for a day. I can just imagine her conversation with her boss. “I’ve got these women for 15 days and I’m simply not going to make it unless I get at least one day off!!”
Matt put up with us quite well. And by the time Constance was back with us, our fever pitch had settled to an acceptable level, Constance got acclimated to our ways and our ‘Jean’ names were never mentioned again.
New Zealand has a mold or virus that is killing their native Kauri (pronounced cow-ree) trees and washing our shoes before entering the forest is mandatory.
I was enthralled with the different types of trees I saw.
I thought these steps were ingenious. You build a 2×4 or 2×6 frame and then fill it with dirt and stones.
Kauri trees are native and the tallest of NZ. We were in what is called a Cathedral of trees. At first I thought we were seeing a church — wrong terminology.