Day Eleven: Wellington, New Zealand

Dear All,

Today we are in Wellington, the capitol of New Zealand. Wellington is located at the southern tip of North Island. Tomorrow we head to Christchurch, which is on the South Island. If you aren’t sure of the geography of New Zealand, see map below:

This afternoon we took a bus to the Zealandia Eco Sanctuary. When the settlers came here in the mid 1800’s, they introduced mammals like pigs, dogs, rats, rabbits and of course, the detestable possum. Apparently, this wreaked havoc on the original New Zealand bush and wildlife because until then, most of the birds and so forth did not have many natural enemies. So, twenty years ago, conservationists built an impervious fence around about 500 acres close to Wellington, and are reintroducing many species of wildlife that were extinct, largely birds.

Are you bored yet? I kind of was. But it was actually cool to see what the bush would have looked like before all the slash and burn agriculture.

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For those of you who have read my previous blogs, you know I have both pleasant and not so pleasant experiences with my fellow tourees and tour guides. Today’s experiences:

So, we saw a movie at the beginning of our Zoolander, I mean Zealandia, experience. It showed the indigenous animals like the Moa, a flightless bird who became extinct in about 1445 when they were hunted by the Maori. The Moa was approximately 12 feet tall and weighed about 500 pounds. The whole point of the movie was how many animals/birds were hunted and preyed upon to the point of extinction. They showed CGI (Julie taught me this lingo—Computer Generated Imagery) of the Moa that looked somewhat like the picture below:

So, after the movie, one guy asked our tour guide if the Moa is extinct. Really, dude? Have you seen any prehistoric 500 pound 12 foot high flightless birds around lately? What a dumb ass. (Sorry, Mom.)

Also, another weird moment. At the end of the apparently super realistic movie, our tour guide, Aux (or Ox?) asked us to check our purses and backpacks for lizards, rats or mice before we went into the area with the impervious fence, because nothing like that can be introduced to the inner eco sanctuary. And Aux/Ox was dead serious! So, just to play his little kooky game, I checked. Thankfully, I was transporting none of the above in my Baggallini (translation: tiny purse).