Shops, animals and the space noodle.

Our initial goal this morning was to locate Magic Hollow, a clothing outlet that Lily had been pretty keen to check out. Along the way, I managed to take a bunch of happy-snaps of the cityscape like some kind of slack-jawed yokel.

A patient Josh sitting out the
front of Magic Hollow.

Fortunately, the shop in question (apparently entirely located below street level) was not only open but resulted in a couple of purchases.

Downtown Auckland was a maze of arcades, lane ways lined with cafes and even some early-opening bars serving craft beer. There were some fairly significant wind gusts up and down said lane ways, but we persisted, and even had morning tea alfresco (holding down napkins while we ate). It was still fairly early in the day when our shoppers ran out of puff - so we made our way out to Auckland Zoo.

We initially made our way to the African exhibit, with the viewing platform giving you not only an eye-full but a nose-full of some of the larger animals of the savanna.

Obligatory Meerkat photo.

The baboon exhibit never fails to provide an educational experience for the kids. At least they had the decency to blush.

Our next destination was the New Zealand exhibit, featuring a variety of bird-life. We managed to spot a Kiwi in a suitably darkened exhibit - dutifully sighing and frowning when another tourist took a photo with flash (pretty sure that's an almost jail-able offence over here). The Takahe exhibit features a mountain stream running through a very realistic landscape. Somewhat eerily, while the red-beaked Takahe was in evidence, the Whio (blue duck) was nowhere to be seen..

The Takahe - allegedly a herbivore.

Kea - known to rip the wiper blades from your car.

Part of the South American exhibit included the Capybara. We got there just as the keeper was feeding both them and the Squirrel Monkeys that share their exhibit, the monkeys leaping onto the Capybaras for a brief ride.

Capybara

The Zookeeper locating the missing Squirrel Monkey

In a genius move - I brought along our wireless modem, but left the recharging cord back at our apartment - the battery naturally gave out as we left the zoo car park. This left us to make our way across Auckland (inclusive of multiple looping over/underpasses) from memory. Turns out Jen still has hers.

After a meal in the city (Bento - because that makes sense), we made our way to Auckland's Sky Tower (which Josh "hilariously" re-named the Space Noodle). I somehow manage to forget that I experience a reasonable degree of acrophobia until I clap eyes on the ludicrously tall structure in question.

Sky Tower, space needle, space noodle.

The elevator rocketed up to the 51st floor, with the engineers kindly including windows in both the elevator doors and floor - only Hamish sharing my sensible terror of gravity and high places.

Great job engineers.

Both Lily and Josh took great pleasure in jumping up and down on the perspex (or some way too clear material) flooring section of the viewing platform. They ascended to the Sky Deck with Jen, while Hamish and I occupied a bench, backs to the central column.

Please ignore my white knuckles and overly-firm grip on Josh.

Tomorrow sees us depart our city apartment, and head on over to the Coromandel Peninsular.