It was an early getup this morning as we needed to pick up our car outside of town. We trudged along with our suitcases and made it to britomart station only to find out Trains were not running as it was good Friday. So we had to take a bus. We had awful problems finding the bus and eventually asked another bus driver. The bus driver was Irish/Kiwi and was hilarious and so helpful he decided he would take us as close as he could to where we needed to go even though he wasn’t meant to. Thanks to his kindness we found ourselves near Thrifty and had to complete only a short walk.
Getting the car was simple and soon we were out of there and stopping to have breakfast. We spent some time reorganising our bags and then headed too Auckland Zoo. The Zoo was amazing, it has no conventional cages. You can see in most of the enclosures with no glass and actually walk in with the animals for a lot of them. We enjoyed walking above the African Savannah part and seeing the animals. We took our time in the New Zealand section as it was very interesting to see these Animals. NZ have a lot of flightless bird and a lot of which are on the endangered species list. We were very excited to see the Kiwi bird up and moving. We were also very surprised how big they were. We had a look at the rest of the animals and skipped the Australian section. It was an amazing zoo and I would have to say possibly better than Melbourne, with Singapore Zoo still being the best I have seen.
We hopped back in the car and headed on the journey down to Matamata. The countryside in New Zealand is beautiful and the 2 hr 15 min drive went quickly. We arrived at our hotel which is beautiful and then headed in to get dinner. In the middle of Matamata we found the information centre which is shaped like a hobbit house and the Hobbiton sign.
It was a very nice day and Rotorua tomorrow.