Wild Animal Encounters

The Walsh Family continued our Auckland Adventure by making our way to the Auckland Zoo.  JP's meetings started the following day, so we found the bus and thanks to a great network of public transportation, a bus pulled up and we were off to the zoo!  Auckland and New Zealand as a whole is set-up for pedestrians and makes it very easy to navigate without a car! 

The Auckland Zoo has great exhibits and thanks to trenches, allows you to see the animals up close, without tall fences or cages.  We even got to see their elephant take a bath in an outdoor watering hole and later in the day ran into her on a walk through the zoo with her handlers!  The spider monkeys were great fun to watch.  High on Emma's list was the meerkat - an animal her Great Aunt Alice (development director at the Detroit Zoo) had recently sent her.  There was a baby as well and Emma and JP got to explore tunnels under the meerkat grounds.  The zoo has many great open spaces and play areas.  Emma became a monkey and a spider in one spot, and became a dinasour hatchling and conqured the dragon in another play area!  A sighting of the national bird, the kiwi and the tuatora capped off a fun-filled adventure to the Auckland Zoo!