Today we had a nice lie in as we have no check out (not that that has stopped us before!), woop woop!

Once fed and dressed we headed for the Orana Wildlife Park, where we could spot some Kiwi birds. Aswel as kiwis the zoo housed all sorts including an Africana section, native birds and reptiles, meerkats, gibbons, spider monkeys and a farmyard. Included in your admission you could participate in some of the daily feeding of the animals, so first stop was the farmyard feed. Yes yes I know farmyard animals aren't that interesting but I had a great time feeding the lambs and calves (who knew that those scary cows were once such sweet little things!) pigs, donkeys and Shetland ponies. My favourite were the calves! Next we were off to see the famous kiwi being fed. Housed in a dark room as they are nocturnal the zoo simulates night to them in our day so that we can see them, and then they have 'daylight' in our night time. Quite strange birds, they cannot fly although they have small wings, they are about the size of a chicken. Considered extremely endangered there is an estimated 60,000 of them scatted over NZ, which I thought sounded quite a lot for an endangered species but compared to how many there used to be apparently this is barely any. There are 3 species of kiwi although the brown kiwi is the most famous!

After that we visited the NZ tuatara (lizard) we headed to the spider monkey feed and then to the lion feed. I think we both feel that after our visit to Zion, no lion enclosure in a zoo will compare so we had a quick look before heading towards the giraffes so we could help hand feed them. We were both quite excited about this as neither of us have been that close to giraffes before. We positioned ourselves on the platform, with twig in hand, and braced ourselves. A giraffe spied my twig and had soon plucked all the leaves (and nearly my arm!) leaving me with a bare twig. We spent some time feeding them whilst attempting to take some photos before they had stripped the twig and moved on to the next person in the row! Next stop…Rhino feed! We were allowed to stand a few feet away from the five rhinos whilst they ate their hay, although we were warned that they could stick their heads through the wooden bollards and reach us with their horns so we had to be careful! They also explained that they would start to spar with each other when the food began to run out and this was more scary to witness than exciting, These massive animals, which are basically pure muscle, pounding around making the floor tremble, all the while we are only a few feet away with nothing more than wood and mesh between us! Mark loved it!

There wasn't much else to see after the Rhinos so we decided to head back to the campsite and make use of the free wi-fi the library offered which, as luck would have it, was only a brief walk from home.