We visit the wildlife sanctuary in Wellington

Here is an other supplement to our trip to New Zealand

From Kelburn, we went for a walk through the suburbs to a wildlife sanctuary. We stopped to get a photo with the hills behind us. Wellington certainly has lots of hills.

At the wildlife sanctuary we saw lots of birds that only live in New Zealand. We also finally saw a Tuatara. Tuataras look like lizards, but they are from a much older family that is a remnant of the dinosaurs. He was a big fellow, about 30 centimetres long. Certainly big enough to gobble up small backpackers, so we didn't want to get too close. The name "Tuatara" means "Peaks on the back" in the Maori language. If you look closely, you can see the peaks on the back of this tuatara.

Somewhere, we have photos of us with some baby tuataras that are much more our size, but that camera is still packed in a box with our host family's luggage.