Got up this morning and enjoyed a cup of tea and a chat with some of the people in the hostel. We put on CNN and tried to glean any more information about the election. It all seems a bit up in the air but I guess it will be sorted one way or the other in the end!
We decided it was time to do some washing and as I treat, I thought it would be cool to take it to the launderette next door to the hostel as it was rather cheap for a service wash and I am getting a bit bored of washing my clothes – actually I think I am more bored with having to dangle clothes over everything and anything I can to try and dry it. Anyway, so between us we made a bag of darks and a bag of lights and dropped them in to the launderette. Excellent! Job done!
That task complete, Mike and I hopped in the car and went into town. We had a wander around and took a drive along the waterfront just to see it close up and stopped for a morning coffee. Then we navigated our way across to Kelly Tarlton’s Aquarium. As we drew close to the aquarium, something odd caught our eye – an iceberg in the harbour with three penguins sitting on it?! After a couple of moments of dumbfoundedness, we realised that neither the iceberg or the penguins were real; they were an unusual advert for Kelly Tarlton’s!
Outside the front of the aquarium we saw the most unusual vehicle I think I have ever had the fortune to cast my eyes upon – a shark bus! Literally a bus which was a shark. Awesome. Sometimes Kiwi randomness comes up top trumps!
We went into the aquarium and had a mooch about. We had a look at the kiddie’s section with lots of cool things and watched some people dressing up as penguins! We then had a look at the stuff about sharks and I got very excited about the Megladon! Mike got very excited about the fish tank with fish and weird underwater Lego creations in it! In this main room, the focal point was the stingray pool and we watched a guy come out, get in the water and feed them, whilst telling us all about them. They were massive and would rear up out of the water and wrap their wings around him to encourage him to give them more fish! It looked quite scary and I couldn’t help but think about the large barbs in their tails and what might happen if he didn’t feed them quick enough! They are passive creatures apparently, only using their barbs if they really feel a significant sense of danger (as Steve Irwin found out!). They do look amazing as they fly about in the water, but I was a bit creeped out when one of them kept swimming past me, coming up to the surface and looking out of the water, it’s azure blue eye boring straight into mine.
After the stingray show, we were collected by one of the staff, Anna, along with a group of others and taken out the back to get ready for our exciting adventure! First we filled in waiver forms (I love the way you always have to fill in a form to say you understand that you might die during an activity and that if you do, you won’t hold anyone responsible!), then grabbed wetsuits and boots and got changed.
Now for the fun – getting into the shark tank! Now, Kelly Tarlton was apparently a bit of a pioneer in the NZ world of scuba and aquariums. He invented the idea of a walk through aquarium, where the public could get to see fish really close up by walking through a thick Perspex tunnel under the water, so that is what we were getting into – the aquarium which everyone else was walking through underneath. We were given snorkels and masks and hopped into the floating net cage - a five-sided box with a clear Perspex floor and walls made of net. The water was incredibly cold – around 19oC, the shock of the cold makes you breathless for a few minutes as you get used to it. Once adjusted, we could then stick our heads in the water and see the fish and sharks swimming around us. Anna moved the cage around, so we could see the different parts of the aquarium and lots more fish, including bronze whaler , wobbegong and school sharks and some stingrays. They seemed completely oblivious to us and did not come anywhere near the cage, it was amazing watching them though. I kept forgetting I wasn’t using scuba gear and so would go too deep in the water and take in a lovely gulp of water as my snorkel was under the surface! Oops! I liked the rays best as I just love the way they move in the water; it’s fascinating. The sharks were cool, but being the daredevil I am, they didn’t look scary enough for me! I also took great pleasure at waving at the people who were looking up at us from the tunnel – particularly the Japanese tourists who took lots of photos of us!
After fifteen minutes, we hopped out of the water and had a much needed hot shower to try and warm up! Then we got changed and went out to enjoy the rest of the aquarium – walking through the tank we’d just been floating about in! The tunnels themselves are really cool, as they have a moving floor, so you can just stand on it and get taken about, or hop off and walk at your own pace. We could see the cage we’d been in, which was quite odd! There were several different tanks with different fish in each. Once we’d been around the whole tunnel, we got off the moving platform and headed to the rest of the static fish tanks. I found the seahorses particularly interesting to look at but did not like the lobsters, crabs and crayfish – they were way too big and scary looking (it reminded me of the fright I get when I open the fridge and find a huge fresh Cornish crab in there, thanks to a visiting relative - yuck!).
The last thing to see was the Antarctic display (I think that’s the right one?!) where we got into a ‘snowcat’ and got taken through the exhibit to see lots and lots of penguins. They were very cute indeed and it was funny watching them plodding about on the surface all awkward but then plopping into the water and flying around really gracefully. Following that, we hopped out and made our way out.
We headed back to the hostel via the supermarket and then Mike got ready to head off for another evening with a NZ acquaintance, whilst I remained at the hostel and chilled out with the tv. I learned that the election result is still upside down and no one knows what is going on – apparently you can make the story of the fact that there is no story, last for about an hour on CNN! Then I settled down for the evening with a few others to watch various tv shows and finally Iron Man. I enjoyed this film more than I did when I saw it the first time at the flicks, so have decided I might perhaps go and see the second one which has just come out here, if I can find somewhere with a cinema on my travels.
No comments:
Post a Comment