Flora And Fauna

Somehow Mom managed to score a free business-class upgrade on her way here and since she bounded off the plane in very high spirits last Friday morning we have been having some very fun mother-daughter time. “I can’t believe I’m in the South Pacific” she said, her first day here as we were taking advantage of the sunny weather to visit the first of two botanical gardens we’d see on her trip here.

After a couple of days here in town spent going, as is my wont, to Te Papa and Espressoholic, we went down to Christchurch in the South Island…my six months here have been mostly spent in my office and at New World and Fidel’s, so I haven’t actually really been anywhere…and had a lovely time there. Mom is on a Garden World Tour, much as I am on an Aquarium and Hot Tub World Tour, so that makes it pretty easy to prioritize our tourist opportunities whenever we find ourselves in a new town.

We hied ourselves immediately to the roses in the gorgeous Botanical Gardens and walked around talking about other gardens we’d been to together. I took the opportunity to take Iconic New Zealand Shot #784, a lovely unscrolling koru fern. The koru is one of New Zealand’s symbols and you see swirly spirally stuff all over the place, like on people’s bone pendant necklaces. It’s supposed to symbolize growth and change and renewal. I think it would be really cool to get a tattoo of a koru; I can’t decide if it would be cooler to get a more stylized abstract shape or something more like a botanical print. (I am still a little undecided about my so-called thirtieth-birthday tattoo, which is getting to be a problem as I am almost thirty-two.)

After checking out the museum and the above very large chess game in Cathedral Square we headed out to a nature reserve to see a Maori cultural performance (which I, in my great knowledge and experience, didn’t think was as cool as the one I went to in Rotorua in August, but was still pretty good) and a nature walk. New Zealand is all about the crazy weird birds and I was pretty excited to see a kiwi bird fairly close—they really are the strangest things. My gentleman caller David Attenborough (I feel he’s a little too dignified to refer to him as my boyfriend, for some reason) says that kiwis are essentially the bird equivalent of hedgehogs, that they evolved in a mammal-free environment to occupy the same ecological niche. Awesome, yes?

I was also pretty thrilled to finally be able to see a kea, even if it wasn’t in the wild. I’ve heard a lot about these freaky parrots for multiple years and I had a secret desire, once we entered their enclosure, that one would come and sit on my shoulder. I am always, unless I happen to be seeing alligators at Shark Valley or something, hoping that the animals will pick me out of the crowd. It is my deep desire, for example, to one day be able to really interact with an octopus, although frankly I’m less sure how to make that one happen.

Anyway, you can imagine how happy I was (“Mom! Mom! Get the camera! Mom! The camera! Mom!”) when my birdly aspiration came true, after a little meaningful eye contact and strategic lagging behind the group on my part.

And how surprised I was to find it trying to undo the clasp on my mermaid necklace, too.

There were also many pukekos wandering around. You see these at the side of the road a lot, apparently, but I rarely go anywhere in a car so I thought I should get a picture while the getting was good.

We headed out to Akaroa to spend some time by the beach. I was thrilled to be out of the rain and wind of Wellington and to see some of the vaunted South Island scenery; people are always telling me how much the North Island sucks, comparatively, and while I don’t think the North Island sucks at all in terms of gorgeosity, you have to admit that stuff like this (which is just shot from the side of the road on the way to Banks Peninsula) is pretty amazing. I feel so lucky to be here.

It had been almost twenty-four hours since we’d had any wildlife sightings so we went on a harbor tour (because that, and looking at antiques, is pretty much what there is to do in Akaroa) and saw some Hector’s dolphins, which are the smallest in the world.

See? Right there? Where the guy is pointing? Right there? No, there. See? The tiny dolphin? You can go swimming with them too, apparently, which I didn’t do on this trip but I look forward to trying it next time I’m down there. How cool would that be? My hope is, when I do this, that one of these eeny weeny little dolphins will befriend me and take me down to see an octopus, who will wrap me in its arms and swim around with me, changing color all the while. And then I want to become some sort of mermaid, okay? (I watched Splash a lot as a kid.)

There seemed to be nothing for it but to head back to Christchurch and go see the new penguins (which are also the world’s smallest, fascinatingly enough) at the Antarctic Centre. We went on the Backstage Penguin Tour and go to go into the exhibit a little, as well as to where they quarantine the sick penguins. All of them have some sort of disability or injury and the staff there have had to learn a lot about them very quickly. It was really endearing, how much the staff were into these little guys, cooing and making kissy sounds at them.

We got to go downstairs to the pool room as well and I took a couple of pictures of the various aquarium appliances there, just in case there are any nerds reading who might enjoy shots of deozonifier thingies.

I liked the Penguin Care Centre much better, with its refrigerators full of delicately sliced herring and its helpful warning signs.

This little girl was pretty cute, too. She was just walking around on the floor when we came in, checking things out. It was cool that it was such a casual tour; the staff were just in there washing penguin nests in the dishwasher and hanging out when we came in. They’ve only had the birds since September and are learning a lot about them very quickly. Our awesome tour guide told us that originally they thought that they’d need, like, one part-time vet and then someone to feed them. They’ve hired two full-time vets (neither of whom had worked with penguins before) and three other full-time staff, most of whose duties, they told us, involve whirring up salmon smoothies for penguins with sore throats. This penguin you see right here had sore feet, so she’s wearing some green bandages to keep the antibiotic ointment on there longer. Is there anything funnier than a teeny blue penguin toddling around in little boots? No.

She was just finishing molting for the year, hence her very fetching little crown of fluffy feathers. Our very awesome guide said that one of the other birds had, for some reason, molted earlier than everyone else “and her boyfriend left her. For another male.” She sort of rolled her eyes and shook her head, like: what can you do? You don’t look so good, your man may very well leave you for someone who uses product correctly, you know? Fortunately, the scruffy penguin’s partner eventually left his better-looking boyfriend and came back to her, although word around the exhibit is that occasionally the two boys will get together, late at night, and no one knows what they get up to except that flashing lights and old Erasure singles are clearly seen and heard to emanate from that casual fling’s nest.

Clearly I was just in it for the flightless water birds, but it turned out that the rest of the Antarctic Centre was really cool as well. I thought a lot about Ruth, my former (and still beloved) hair lady, who is currently spending her second summer at McMurdo. If I had the chance, man, I’d do that in a second, even if I was cleaning bathrooms or whatever, because can you imagine? Even though I hate technical clothing and being cold?

Every fifteen minutes in the snow room (they gave you coats and overshoes, to keep you warm and the snow clean, respectively) they’d make it storm, and for some stupid reason I stayed in there, wearing capris, for five very cold minutes. I ended up sheltering in that fake igloo there, along with a couple of similarly cold-intolerant five-year olds, muttering “I paid to do this?”

(I still think it would be cool to go to Antarctica, whatever the evidence of my unsuitability for such an endeavor).

As exhilarating as it was to survive the fake snowstorm, my favorite part of the exhibit was about what everyday life on the base is like. There were many hilarious documents appended to this replica of the staff bulletin board, the best of which outlined some of the expected etiquette on base: snow boots and overalls, it turns out, are frowned upon in the dining hall, and scientific equipment is to be cleaned well away from the kitchens.

We’re back in Welly now and my two weeks of vacation are just about over, as I’m going in to work tomorrow and Tuesday for half days before Mom heads back home to Miami. We went to brunch at Fidel’s with Deirdre and Nahum this morning and then to the beach at Island Bay; We’ve been watching some DVDs featuring my abovementioned gentleman caller and she’s altered some t-shirts for me. I think we’ve had a good mix of exciting stuff (keas! penguins!) and also low-key stuff like pouring peanut sauce over steamed vegetables and buying each other presents. I love it when that happens.

It feels very normal and natural in most ways to have her here because we’re doing all the things we normally do together, things we’ve done (made dinner, gone for walks, watched nature shows) in various cities at various times since before I can remember. Every once and again, though, over the past couple of days, I’ve sort of startled to recall that here we are in my new city, and I’m the one now who can give directions, I’m the one who knows the bus schedule and where to get good hot chocolate. It’s strange. I’ve been here six months now, almost exactly, and I can’t decide if that’s a little or a long time. If I can have visitors here, though, if I can go on holiday like a regular person, it must mean I really live here, right?