The decision was between Orana Wildlife Park and Willowbank Wildlife reserve (same price). Orana is an open range zoo with lions, giraffe's, etc. Willowbank reserve has only New Zealand (whether originating or introduced) animals. I asked our local friend Rachel who has 2 young children which she thought would be better for us. I thought Orana would be really cool because it has all those international animals, but she actually suggested Willowbank for us and I'm so glad she did!
Willowbank while only having NZ animals was perfect for us at this point in our lives. First off the park is designed to walk through with strollers. This is a huge + for us. It was shaded and actually a very beautiful walk through the park. You don't have to walk far to see the next animals, they are all very close together (but not in a constrained way). The park is actually a lot bigger than I thought. It took us about 2 hour to walk through the whole thing and there were still lots of very cool animals. They had a HUGE assortment of birds, and although I have a slight phobia of birds, Logan absolutely loves them. They had wallabies, monkeys, and we even got to see a real kiwi bird! Logan absolutely loved the park and while Orana has international animals, you'd have to walk so far to get to see each animal. Besides I figure I'll save the money to take Logan to the Toronto Zoo when we visit, because let's face it, no matter how cool Orana seems, it's not going to be better than the Toronto Zoo.
Here's Logan feeding a goat that she became quite fond of. She didn't even care when the goat headbutted her
Here's Logan walking through the park. She's getting really good at walking!
And here's me feeding a monkey (just chives not real food so don't worry about the no feeding sign). and yes I know I need a hair cut!
That's about it for this week. Here's some of my favourite pictures from this week:
That is Logan playing her "night night" game. She likes to pretend it's bedtime and makes us say night night and she lies on the floor and we have to tuck her in and she closes her eyes.
Logan walking with Daddy at Hagley Park.
What else is new? Well Fox is pretty much sitting by himself. He has 2 teeth now on the bottom. He's such a cutie and sooooo good. I can't believe what a good baby he is. I also can't believe how good Logan is with him. She really loves to play with him and is always sharing with him. We're pretty lucky, let's hope them getting along this good stays this way!
Here's a video of him giggling:
Being a stay-at-home mom I get bored a lot. So I've recently taken the hobby of finding cheap airline tickets. There are lots of deals to be found to fly within NZ. As long as you're flexible on dates (which we are), you can find some great deals. I found $1 flights to Dunedin, one way. It would have cost $4 for me and Andrew to fly down for the day. There aren't air taxes on domestic flights and kids under 2 fly free if they don't have their own seat. I tried to talk Andrew into going, but he didn't want to because we've been to Dunedin and there really wasn't much to see there. It kinda reminds me of Hamilton, an Industrial University town (no offence to you Dunedin people). But I guess even for $4 we wouldn't go back there. I did happen to find $29 flights to Queenstown but we decided it would be better to go there with a car and the dates didn't pan out too well. I then found $39 flights to Auckland where the dates were perfect (during one of Andrew's breaks). So it looks like we're going to Auckland for a few days from July 2-6, and the flights only ended up costing us $156. Hopefully we can stay with some family friends as well. It should be lots of fun. I am particularly looking forward to going to the Kelly Tarlton Aquarium which has sharks and King Penguins and Gentoo Penguins (my favourite) since I was quite disappointed to find out the Antarctic Centre in Chch only has blue penguins (boring), and I am not about to pay to see blue penguins.
Til next time!
BTW - There's a link to more pictures of Willowbank on the side.
