Willowbank

No one wanted to go to Christchurch the last day of November. Going to Christchurch meant dropping Grandma off at the airport, and we just weren’t ready for that! The tickets said we had to take her there that day, though, so we did it. We went to church in Waikari that morning, since it is on the way to town. Going between Waikari and the highway, we crossed Weka Pass, which is a low pass through a range of hills. There are some spectacular rock formations in that pass! The last one is called Frog Rock.

Since we had about three hours in town before having to be at the airport, we went to Willowbank Wildlife Reserve, a small zoo. Before entering, we were taking a picture of the children in front of this small building, and a bus driver who was waiting nearly came up and offered to take a picture of all of us! We greatly appreciated it; he said he does it all the time.

There are some beautiful spots along the trail that winds through the park.

See the black swan under the branches?

One special extra we had at Willowbank was when we happened upon a group of keepers releasing three emus into an enclosure. They had just gotten them and were opening the crate when we arrived on the scene. It was pretty funny to see those heads popping up over the edge of the crate, then hiding again. Once the door was open and the keepers were all out of the enclosure, it took a long time for the emus to get up the courage to actually leave the crate that had been their home for three days! We stayed to see one bounce out, but after 10 minutes or so moved on and left the 10 or so keepers to keep watch! This was obviously the event of the day at Willowbank!

We were able to get tickets to Willowbank Wildlife Reserve for half-price recently, thanks to a tip from a friend. The tickets were good till the end of June, so we were planning to go sometime before then, but weren’t sure when it would work out. Gayle didn’t want to take time off work for that, but neither did we want to go on a Saturday because there would likely be a lot of people there. Then, we ended up needing to go to Christchurch to meet the Vice-Consul from the American Embassy in Auckland when he made a visit to Christchurch, to get the baby’s American paperwork done and apply for his passport. The appointment was in the early afternoon on a Thursday, and both of us had to be there, so that was our perfect opportunity to take the family to Willowbank!

There were tame eels in a pond at the beginning of the tour, and a woman was spoon-feeding them with a little container of food she bought in the office. They would crawl partway out of the water onto the step!