The group met downstairs at 9:00 for our bus out to the next valley over to go jetboating. However once we arrived it turned out that out of all of us only three people wanted to go! (I was not one of them). I did feel bad for Renee because she couldn’t go since the majority of guests didn’t go.
I took some good video though. I think it might also explain why I didn’t want to go...
After that, we went to the Kiwi Bird Park. The owner, Paul, greeted us and had personally made the lunch we were going to have. He doesn’t often do that for guests, but Tauck has been coming so long (and he loves having them), so he really pulled out all the stops for us.
Before lunch, Paul, and his assistant zoologist, Paul (two Pauls made it easy to remember everyone’s name!), took us around the conservation area. Twenty-five years ago the Park was a rubbish dump and had to be completely cleaned up. They planted more than 800 native trees, and Paul and his dad started their conservation efforts.
Today they have multiple pairs of mating Kiwi and other endangered New Zealand birds. They actively participate in release efforts, getting the animals back out into the wild. They also have quite a clutch of baby tuataras, which are very special, both to New Zealand and to the rest of the Animal Kingdom. Tuataras are their own branch of the reptile tree (there are: lizards/snakes, turtles, and Sphenodontia). Tuataras are the only remaining member of the Sphenodontia order, and they have been around for 250 million years! To put that in perspective the dinosaurs died out only 65 million years ago. So basically, they’re living dinosaur relatives.
They are also the only four legged animal native to New Zealand. They have the lowest metabolic rate of any reptile. Every winter they go into a torpor (basically a self-induced coma), they only breath once or twice a minute, their heart beats only 5 times a minute, and they can actually go years without eating. No one knows exactly how long they live, but current guesses place it at about 160 years. The zoologist Paul brought out one of the babies (only 12 years old), and it is safe to assume he will outlive us all.
Both Pauls were great. The zoologist was especially into the animals and knew all their names. He took us all around the park, telling us about the animals, what made them special, and what kinds of steps were being taken to conserve them.
The big event this morning was that they candled an egg just laid by a young mating pair to see if there was a chick in there, and indeed there was! Unfortunately, the young couple isn’t mature enough to figure out how to correctly incubate the egg, so they’ve actually swapped it out with an infertile egg laid by a more mature pair. The more mature father is now sitting on the egg like his life depends on it, and hopefully the young father will eventually figure out what he’s supposed to do with the egg.
After our tour of the park, the owner Paul took us back to the restaurant. His wife drove two and a half hours to get us the most wonderful steak and potatoes for lunch. Paul grilled the steak to perfection and the potatoes were the creamiest I’ve ever tasted! It was so good I didn’t put anything on it at all. There was really excellent plum sauce for the steak, not something that would have leapt to my mind as a condiment, but it was perfect. There was also a tasty salad (vaguely reminiscent of coleslaw, only much better). And there was fresh-baked potato bread Paul baked himself. It was a lovely lunch!
After lunch we got a real treat, because Paul is putting together a bus tour of Queenstown. The history tour isn’t supposed to start until next month, but we got to be his test guests. He took us all around Queenstown, and a charming girl (American actually, from Utah originally) who helped him write the script, took us around the city, sharing history and local stories. It was delightful!
After that they dropped us off at the bottom of the Skyline gondola ride to the top of Bob’s Peak. The gondola ride was really steep! It went up more than 1000 feet so our ears were definitely popping. Looking down, there was a very rough track (so steep it needed a nylon hand rail to hold on). I’m not sure what it was used for... Dad suggested it was if they needed to evacuate the gondola. But since we were thirty or forty off the ground and halfway up the mountain, I hoped that wasn’t true.
When we got to the top we were greeted with a fantastic view of the city, lake, and surrounding mountains. Several nice people offered to take pictures of the two of us, and we took a few of others as well.
The mountain is a ski resort most of the time, but in the off-season they do luge rides down the side of the mountain. It looked pretty fun! But Dad and I decided not to press our luck too much. We did a little souvenir shopping instead.
Then we went back down in the gondola and returned to the hotel for a quiet evening. I caught up on my blog entries and Dad went to a wine tasting organized by the hotel. He brought be back a really nice sauvignon blanc. Tonight we’re having dinner at the hotel, but tomorrow we might try Fergburger, which has received very high reviews from Laura and her friends and the guide on our tour today...
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