New Zealand 2012 Ramblings: Day 13 - Gannets Safari Overland; Farmyard Zoo; Arataki Honey; Young Adult group

-4 September, Tuesday-

Photo of the day - Having an alpaca seemingly try to bite my face thinking I had food there too (very unglam shot of myself, but it was quite funny:D):

At 9am, I left the house with aunty Joy to drive to the meeting point of our Gannet Safaris Overland Tour at Cape Kidnappers. Our driver-guide, Wayne, drove us in a Range Rover into private grounds of some rich man's golf course as we drove out to Cape Kidnappers. The scenery was just beautiful!

 

 

You may be asking, "what are gannets?" They are actually birds:) I like how they are so white, and the yellow is a nice, clear, definitive yellow that is not too bright and it almost like gold colour. They didn't mind us there and didn't come flying too close overhead. They just sat there, moved around a little, made some sounds which wasn't too loud or noise:

 

 

It's interesting how they turn their necks 180 degrees so that they can tuck their whole head and neck into their weathers:

There were 3 groups of them. 1 group was at the top of Cape Kidnappers, just next to where we were standing. Then down the cliff there was a small part of sand/beach that had another colony:

The 3rd group is on the flat-looking piece of rock nearer to the bottom left corner of the left photo. I took the right photo to show you that there used to be 3 pinnacles (like daggers sticking out of the sea), but because of erosion and weather conditions, they just disappeared into the water!

The scenery really was breathtakingly beautiful to me. Despite the strong winds, the sky and sea was just so blue, and everything was just so still. You can only hear the sounds of birds and waves coming ashore. Wayne prepared cups of tea and coffee and he had a box of biscuits for us to enjoy as we sat up there for awhile, just chatting about the birds and life and all.

We then stopped at Hawkes Bay Farmyard Zoo at Haumoana, Hastings. I was expecting it to be a small place, but they had lots of land and quite alot of farm animals! I'm glad aunty Joy got me a cup of food to feed the animals - it made the visit much more fun and new to me because I've never fed animals like that before.

Say hello to Garfield the cute hairy donkey. It was rather shy and didn't want to eat the dried corn I offered to it:

Then here's the greedy, rather aggressive alpaca who tried to get ahead of me and eat straight from the cup of dried corn. This is the alpaca who almost licked my face in its eagerness to get food:

I was most amused by the frizzy scraggly hair of these 2 sheep:

This little goat and 2 lambs were just there by themselves, outside of any pen. The goat was a bit more daring in staying by me and eating some of the food I offered it. But the 2 lambs were very timid and they ran away on my approach. The lambs are really so cute!

I tried to offer food to the ostrich so that I could take a photo with it, but it was most 'dao'. It rejected my offers of food and turned its backside on me:(

If I remember correctly, this is the last sheep we saw in the farmyard zoo before we walked off to the exit. It was quite docile and it took the food off my hand quite nicely:

Cute piglets lying there, enjoying the sun, sleeping. They immediately woke up and jumped to attention when the staff walked by with bread as their feed:

It was a really fun experience having the feel of their big mouths try to scoop or eat up the corn on my palm. It was a bit disgusting, especially when one or two of them nibbled on my palm instead of the food because they just wanted food. It wasn't painful, but it was just quite gross because of their saliva. I was glad to wash my hands before leaving the place. But I don't regret getting the food to feed the animals!:)

From the farmyard zoo, we had a quick lunch at a bakery, then drove over to Arataki Honey for targeted shopping - 2 500g bottles of Manuka Honey UMF Active 15+. When I tried to pay, I found out that I have quite a number of coins that were no longer in use in NZ - I got these coins off my parents who most probably had changed them quite some time ago.

It was then back home for the afternoon to rest and not do anything else. I found dinner more interesting than usual because we had venison sausages from deer shot by David:

At 7:15pm, Sarah and I left the house to visit a Young Adult cell group led by Grant and Wendy, a couple who live on this big house with a big lawn in the front somewhere in Hastings. Attendance was quite poor with only 4 other young adults there. I thought they would be continuing on with material on Hearing the Voice of God by Mark Virkler. But, to my disappointment, I learnt that they had invited a church member by the name of Lisa to share about her experience with Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF). It was interesting, but I thought she digressed quite a bit and her voice was a little soft and monotonous so it got a leeettle bit tiring to focus and pick out what she was saying. She had great stories, but I was still disappointed because I was more keen on hearing a bit of the material on Hearing the Voice of God.

-Signing off on 5 Sep, 9:25pm NZ time (5:25pm SG time)-