Auckland Zoo/Big Ups

So, sorry it's taken so long to tell you about our fun from this past weekend, but we are still trying to get into the flow of things here :). Matt is having so much fun at work, but he is definitely not used to working full time, and he has been bombarded with so much work that he has been working overtime too (with no avail - he doesnt get paid for overtime), so he has been very tired when getting home from work. I am still trying to get used to things around here, so I have been exploring a lot! It has been a lot of fun!

Anyway, so this past weekend we decided to go to the Auckland Zoo, which was a lot of fun, but they are under a lot of construction right now, so it wasnt as fun as I think it could have been; it is suppose to be fully remodeled next September, which is when mom and dad Wheeler are suppose to visit, so hopefully we will go back when they are up here, and hopefully it will be done and a lot of fun! :)

So the zoo is HUGE and I am pretty sure that we missed some things, but when we first walked in, we saw this big area with Zebras, and Emu's and these giraffes. There was some baby giraffes too, and I got some good pictures on my camera, but as Matty said to me, he got some GREAT pictures on his camera, so these are all from his camera (haha I had to throw you under the bus Matty). He is so conceited lol!!! But isnt that giraffe beautiful?!? Such amazing colors!

This monkey below was the funniest thing in the world! This is a sort of bad picture, but it looks like a smaller gorilla, and we were looking at the bird section, when we kept hearing this screaming, and we were trying for a while to figure out where it was coming from. We followed the noise, and these are what we saw! I took a video of them on my camera, which is at the bottom of this post, but they were pretty funny! I am actually not sure what this type of monkey is called, but it was a lot of fun to watch them.

And of course, here are some lazy hippos! We stood by them and watched them for probably 20 minutes and they didnt move at all, but Im pretty sure I have never seen them in real life before, so I enjoyed looking at them. So we were standing there, and of course the place is covered in mud, so there were flies all over, including by us, so I felt a bug on me, and I thought that it was just a fly, so I went to brush it off, and OF COURSE, it was a spider! If anyone knows me, they know that I have the worst luck with spiders! I always think that I have a hair, or a sly on me, and it always seems to be a spider, which I am ABSOLUTELY freaked out by! So anyway, I go to swat the bug away, and it is a spider! UGH; so not only that, but I am wearing a loose shirt, and so when I swat it away, I push it down my shirt on accident! AHHH!!! And I am not completely comfortable with the types of spiders they have over here yet, so I have NO CLUE if it is a dangerous spider or not! (I have heard that there are no deadly spiders here, but that doesnt mean that they dont bite!!!) So anyway, it was not fun! After it went down my shirt, I lost it, I couldnt find it anymore, which just made me feel creepy-crawly the rest of the day! Haha, I know that is silly, but it wasnt fun!

Here is the biggest tortoise either of us has EVER seen in our lives! I know it is hard to tell in this picture, but we were talking and we bet that it weighs about 300-400 lbs! It was HUGE! I know this is a funny way to look at it, but if you were to roll me into a ball, the tortoise was probably twice that size!!!! Amazing!

These here are AMERICAN alligators! There are only two species of alligators in the world (or so we read) and they are Chinese and American alligators; it was fun seeing these in a zoo in New Zealand! We thought that we would end up seeing a lot of exotic creatures, but there were actually a lot of animals that we have seen before, and we went to the area where Kiwi's are, but were unable to see any of them, because they were all sleeping... boo.

But we went to the area where sea lions and penguins are... the penguins are off display right now for some reason, but we did get to see these sea lions, and they were really playful, which was a lot of fun to watch! Usually you just see them lazing around but these ones were swimming all over and kept coming up on this rock, and Matty got some great pictures of them!

And of course, Matty's favorite part was the tiger. When we first walked over to them, they were all very far away and hard to see, but then, the zoo keepers walked by, and the tiger feeding time was only like an hour away, so once the tiger saw the keeper walk by, he got up, and ran to the window to see if he was coming to feed him! It was REALLY cool, because it was so hard to see him before :) It was great, and that was like the last animal that we saw that day. It was a nice note to end on. We were there about 3 hours, and we could have seen a lot more probably, and if we would have stayed another hour, like I said, we could have seen the tiger feeding, but we were exhausted, so we left. It was still a great day, and we look forward to going back when it is fully remodeled.

So that was on Saturday... then Sunday evening, we got invited to go with all Matty's animator friends to this place called Big Ups; anyone who has had Safe and Sober Grad Night in high school would probably recognize all this equipment. It was a big play house for grown ups lol. A lot of blow up slides, and a soccer field, and the velcro wall and sumo wrestling; all that fun stuff. They reserved this place after hours on Sunday, so it was just the people at Oktobor Animation, so that was a lot of fun. Matty said that he has never had so much fun with people from work, and it was a lot of fun getting to know these people and their spouses. We had a lot of fun!

This picture below is Matty going down the blow up slide the wrong way! He is CRAZY! But it was a lot of fun, and we didnt end up with too many battle wounds, other than the sore neck and the occasional rubber burn! They even had these big clear balls that are like the ones that Guinna Pigs run around in; they are called Zorbing balls, and you get inside them and someone pushes you around in them! Crazy! Anyway, if you get the chance, google Zorbing in NZ! It is a really popular thing around here and we really want to try to do that while we are here sometime!

It was a lot of fun doing this on Sunday, and we were so sweaty and gross by the end, and on Monday, we were both pretty sore. Ugh, but it was a lot of fun!

So, anyway, that is what we did this weekend, and OH! I have to tell all about Sal's pizza! We went there on Saturday evening, and Im not sure if we have told you guys yet, but pizza here is VERY different as well! They do not have just pepperoni pizza! Their pepperoni is like salami, so not the same at all! Matty and I are very plain people, and we LOVE pepperoni pizza, so we were so BUMMED to hear that they dont have that here! So anyway, we did find this pizza place and we went there on Saturday; it is AMERICAN pizza! It is a guy from New York who came over here and started a pizza place and it is the BEST pizza ever! I would even venture to say that it is better than most in Reno! So great, and they have REAL pepperoni! haha, it was so great to find this place!

So we went there because we were told about it from some other Americans, and we met someone here that we were told was from Reno, as well. Her name is Mo (Maureen, but everyone calls her Mo). She married a Kiwi, so she lives here now, and she is so AMAZING! She has been so helpful to us, and so we met her on Saturday, and we all went to Sals pizza. It was yummy and it has been great being able to talk to someone from the States (especially Reno), and who has been here for a while, so she has been showing us some really great places, and took me to a couple bars, when Matty is working late, which is great! By the way, they have GREAT beer here!

Okay, sorry, this was a long post, but had to tell all about Mo and the great beer lol!!!

So I hope this video plays, but the one below should be the video of the funny monkey from the zoo!

Okay, love you all and hope to do another post sooner than next week haha!

Love

Carla and Matty