In the Den of the Blue Penguin

For the record, it’s a good thing to plan things in advance. If we had prepared the Auckland Zoo visit months ago, John and I could both see the penguins. But with only one of four slots open, I alone can get in. I hung up the phone during last-minute planning, then John insisted I call back and go. He’ll take pictures from outside. I’m seeing these penguins solo.

We head into Auckland with a fairly reliable map. Unfortunately, I can’t read maps… or couldn’t. We’re about to discover World of Warcraft has equipped me with map-reading skills.

The best way to describe Auckland is traffic circles, parked cars, and… well, more traffic circles. The roads are narrow as shit. All highway excess is gone. Despite the unforgiving driving conditions, the people are reliably kind. The scenery is godly; the weather is fair. We try to live with that.

Then suddenly, John and I are screaming at each other. I turn the map different directions. I’m treating it the same way MMORPG’s rotate mini-maps. Based on where the avatar – err, car – is facing, we need to go this direction.

U-turns are impossible. When you go the wrong way, you have to make a bunch of right left turns through a grid spiral system in hopes you get back to Street A, before you went down piece o’ crap Street C, that was meant to be Street B, to get to XYZ.

Then we find the Auckland Zoo. Glorious.

We do three rounds in the parking lot before we get a spot. There is no extra space to protect from door dings or big butts. But the zoo has red pandas, box-munching tigers, and aviaries galore (oh my!), so to hell with stressing about parking.

It also has the star of this trip’s show: little blue penguins. I pay an additional $50 NZ to join their seaside encounter, so I get to hold, feed, and interact with these penguins. Oh, and seals.

Little blue penguins are softer than one would think. Their tiny beaks eat the fish like bent straws, and their feathers are like baby blankets. They make a whiny cry, like a choked alarm clock, which pulls on every “cute fluffy animal” fiber in the body. They also have a call that sounds similar to their bigger relatives. (Blue penguins, also called fairy penguins, are the smallest penguin on earth.)

The seals – predators to penguins – I approach with hesitance. But they also win me over. The zoo has seal saves with blind eyes, zesty attitudes, and big appetites. They’re all rescues from ships not paying attention.

Outside of the zoo, we make our way to the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere. Unfortunately, this oblong tower is booked for the evening. (It only really sports two fancy restaurants and a casino.) Again, the early CLOSED signs plague us, so we hit the road back to Paihia.

We think we’ll find a cafe along Highway 1, but we continue to encounter closed doors. When we discover one random, Italian place out in the middle of nowhere – it’s not even part of a hamlet – we indulge in subpar spaghetti from a chef that doubles as a grandmother. She asks us what we think of the cooking, and it’s impossible to answer negatively.

The Paihia ice cream stand is closed, but that doesn’t stop us from hitting the grocery store. Countdown has the same brand, in Double Chocolate, which is more than enough to happily turn in.

Tomorrow, we head out on a cruise to the Hole in the Rock.