8-7-19 - Gardens and hyper-active zoo animals

Day 53.

New Zealand, here we come. We are up and out a reasonable 10am. First stop is the Hamilton Gardens. I’m not sure what to expect but New Zealand is a lot more green, wet and plush than I expected.  I was expecting more Australia like but it is actually more Ireland, England, Scotland countryside combined with lush Kuai, Hawaii. The Hamilton Gardens are free – score, bonus!  We haven’t gotten to the grocery store yet so we skipped breakfast and the roving band of teens marches towards the Café as soon as we get there.  A bagel is $15.  Ok, while the Gardens are “free”, clearly, the café is paying for the entire operation.

 A section of the Gardens is organized by country.  This is very cool.  The Italian Renaissance, Chinese and Japanese gardens are group favorites while India is under construction, English garden not so much and the American Western garden is but a few measly cacti.  Perhaps, this is how the express their disapproval of Trump.

 From the Gardens, we go to the Hamilton Zoo continuing our theme of animals, insects, birds and aquatic creatures  we established in Australia.  While not able to compare to the Sydney zoo and habitat, there are a few standouts. We go to the monkey station and Corey was holding a water bottle.  The monkeys went absolutely bonkers trying to climb over, around or just plain smash through the glass to get some of his water on the other side.  I make a mental note to talk to the next zookeeper I see about increased water rights for the poor monkeys.

The Gorillas were all hanging out inside their pen enclosure where you could get up pretty close (with enclosed glass).  The baby gorilla saw us and also went nuts (similar to the monkeys), climbing, swinging and putting on a show for us.  Not sure if he was after the water but I add this to the list of my zookeeper discussion topics.

Another highlight was the one-horned White Southern Rhinos.  There were ~5-7 of them and they were up and walking about.  There are supposed to be fairly uncommon so we deem this the best sighting of the day.   Somehow, we have walked from one end of the zoo to the other and missed the Sumatran Tigers.  Instead of doubling back, since we saw them in Sydney, the group votes to go to the grocery store and then head home for happy hour and dinner.

My nephew Brendan just finished summer term at University of Alabama, Birmingham and is going to spend the week with us.  Unfortunately, his flight from US to Sydney was cancelled so he got in a day later than we did.  He arrives for a late dinner at Riverrun.