Lunch Theft

Last weekend I decided to take a trip to the local fish market down by the quay. It's brilliant, you can buy just about any kind of seafood you can think of and it's all super-fresh! They even have live mussels and eels that you can take away with you, I stuck with the fillets of fish, although I was tempted to buy some whole ones. I purchased some red snapper, kingfish, a blue-nose thai fishcake and some smoked snapper. The snapper is phenomenal, and apparently you can buy snapper and chips in fish and chip shops, so that might be something for the future. I wanted to take pictures, but thought it was a bit weird so opted for a picture of the Skytower from outside the fish market instead!

On Sunday (as many of you will know from Facebook), I went to Auckland Zoo. I saw loads of really cool animals, and even a Kiwi. Apparently they're really rare to see (even at the zoo) because they're nocturnal, shy, and easily scared by noise so it was great that I managed to see two! I tried to take a photo, but because it was dark and there was no flash photography allowed it's not a great image. You can make out it's body, but the head was foraging in the leaves so it's kind of blurry.

The Meerkats on the other hand were only too happy to stand still and have their photo taken making it 'simples' for me..... sorry, but it needed to be said! I also saw seals, penguins, lions, tigers, zebras, wallabies and emus.

As many of you will be aware, I also had a run in with an elephant called Burma. I was sat in the middle of the zoo (no animal cages anywhere near), minding my own business, eating my cheese and tomato roll. Of course, I was busy keeping an eye on the seagulls that were obviously hatching some evil plan to gang up on me and mug me for my last crumb, so busy in fact that I didn't notice the trunk slipping silently past my left shoulder towards my roll (I think Burma and the seagulls had some sort of understanding). To my horror I turned to see this giant elephant with the end of its trunk about 2 inches away from my lunch with the keepers trying to fend her off. Just for good measure before she left, she also had a quick rifle through my bag for anything that I may have left in there. I was so gobsmacked that I didn't even have time to get a photo, but I did find her again a bit later for a quick snap.

Let this be a warning to all of you. It's not the seagulls you have to worry about, it's their partners in crime.