New Zealand; Day 13

Another quiet one today, and perhaps one of being in the right place at slightly the wrong time.  But hey, with all the luck we've had with timing so far on this trip we're not complaining.

We started by heading out to Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Encounter and Underwater World.  It's an aquarium built in the old Auckland sewage works in the mid-eighties.  Kelly was NZ's best approximation of Jacques Cousteau, and was one of the first to use acrylic tanks to allow visitors an eye-level, underwater view of the exhibits.  Sadly for his family he died only 7 weeks after it opened.  A tiny bit sadly for us, one of the best parts was only part open; there's a conveyor belt that takes you on laps of a massive ocean tank, and half of it was closed, but the open half was fantastic.

They've also got little snowmobile tanks that take you for a lap through the penguin enclosure so you can see them up really close.  The cabins are fully sealed because the enclosure has sub-zero temperatures.  Unfortunately that also sealed in the body odour of the teenager sitting in front of us.  The fishy smell of the aquarium when the door finally opened was an unexpected relief.

Anyway, ten baby penguins hatched yesterday, so we got to see some very Happy Feet bundles of fluff up close.  It was fantastic, and as the place wasn't that busy we went on the penguin lap a second time (thankfully having a cabin to ourselves).

After a bite to eat in the cafe, the location of which Eleanor remembered with GPS accuracy, we saw some crayfish and an octopus being fed and fought our way out through the ubiquitous gift shop.  By this stage Eleanor was announcing that she was tired and wanted to go home to bed, but that all changed when she spotted the playground we stopped at.  The shoes I only bought for her a couple of months back are now too small, so she insisted on taking them off, and it was lovely watching her run around in the bindi-free grass and daisies.

After a stop on Auckland's equivalent of Chapel St to pick up new shoes it was home for a nap, and then off to our 6pm dinner reservation in the Orbit revolving restaurant near the top of the Sky Tower.  As mentioned yesterday, we wanted to be there for the transition from day to night.  Great plan; we just didn't count on the rain coming in and the restaurant being in the middle of the cloud belt.  Theoretically diners can see up to 80km, but the best we managed was an occasional glimpse five or six city blocks into the distance.  Still, the food was great and Eleanor - who showed absolutely no fear at all of walking on the glass panels in the observation deck floor - loved being up high.