Shark Tunnels

Somehow this is my last day in New Zealand. It’s been an excellent six weeks.

I didn’t post a journal entry yesterday, but after driving out to the end of the peninsula east of Whangarei I spent the morning hiking in the Bream Head Scenic Reserve along the coast. From there I’d been told by a few people to visit the Hundertwasser Art Center in Whangarei, a museum dedicated to an architect/artist/activist whose architecture was inspired by his disdain for straight lines and inspiration from nature, including tree-covered roofs and undulating floors. While his architecture was neat, the museum also had exhibits about his nude protests and composting toilet, two vivid images which are unlikely to be favorite trip memories for me. After leaving the nudist architect museum it was a 2.5 hour drive to Auckland.

Today being my last day in New Zealand I was trying to decide whether to take the ferry out to one of Auckland’s harbor islands or to stay in the city. In the end, staying in the city provided more flexibility, and given that a common theme of the trip seems to be extensive hiking, I decided to walk everywhere. The Sea Life Aquarium is less than four miles from where I’m staying, so after a nice walk along the water I visited an aquarium that was constructed in 1985 underground in what were formerly municipal sewage tanks. Despite the gross beginnings and limited space, they built a shockingly good aquarium. You enter into an amazingly detailed recreation of Robert Scott’s Antarctic base, then leave to find a huge penguin enclosure populated by king and gentoo penguins; I had serious Antarctica flashbacks hanging out with the birds. They have some smaller tanks and exhibits after that, but then you enter the exhibit that put them on the map. When they opened in 1985 they were the first aquarium to use shaped acrylic for tanks, and they blew away all expected visitor projections since everyone was awed by the experience of walking through tunnels inside of a fish tank. Today it’s still really impressive, with 100 meters of tunnels going past giant sharks, stingrays, tuna, and myriad other fish. I went through this exhibit at least a half dozen times, and would have done a few more laps had I been less uncomfortable with all of the tiny humans that were running around.

From there it was back to the hotel via some of the nature paths in the city. After weeks of searching for birds in the rainforests, I’ve of course discovered that everything from the giant wood pigeons to kingfishers can be found in people’s front yards and on telephone wires, so my hope was that the Auckland suburbs might finally yield a good photo of a tui, one of New Zealand’s unique and very pretty birds. Alas, that photo will need to wait until I’m back again someday. Finally, 31,135 steps later, I returned to the hotel, putting an end to this portion of the trip. Tomorrow it’s off to the airport at 5am, and after connecting flights in Sydney and Canberra the next half of the trip will begin in Tasmania.