New Zealand is a small island off the coast of Australia.
It’s population is 5 million. It’s capital is Wellington.
The flag looks like this:
The flag's meaning is the symbol of the realm, government and the people of New Zealand. The blue background represents the blue squadron of the royal navy. The stars represent the southern cross to show the country's location in the southern hemisphere.
New Zealand is made of two different parts: the North island and the South island. We might be going to both were not totally sure. Right now, we are on the North Island, in Auckland.
When we arrived to New Zealand, we had to go into quarantine right away... yay. We thought after our quarantine, we would be able to go explore the country, but soon after we arrived, New Zealand went into a level 4 lockdown. Nooooooooo!!! Lockdown was very long, I think it was 7 weeks. We didn't do too much.
When we finally got out of lockdown and moved to level 2, we drove to a new house. The cool thing was this time it was different. My parents surprised Nate and I by going to a house with sheep and alpacas!!! It was amazing. All of the 5 Alpacas where girls and the 3 sheep were boys. The people who owned the place had 4 dogs Ruffus, Princess, Fei Fei, and Lucy. They were adorable. We got to feed the sheeps and alpacas and go into their pen. It was really fun.
Next we went exploring. We first went to Maraetai, which is pronounced mar-a-tie.It was beautiful. Then we decided to go to Kawakawa Bay for a picnic. It was a wonderful picnic and a wonderful day of exploring.
We went to Rotorua.
We went to Rotorua also known as Sulphur city. It’s called Sulphur city because there are geothermal waters that make the whole town smell like sulphur. In Rotorua, there are a bunch of geysers and geothermal pools and a bunch more fun things to do.
We went luging..What is a luging?? A luge is kind of like a go kart but more eco friendly that has no batteries. So how do you move them?? There was a lever you would pull the lever all the way back and you would brake. When you move the lever a little bit forward and you would zip down the track Nate and I got to go 7 times each. We loved it. Even though I crashed into a crash pad. It was still fun.
We checked out the Redwood forest and went on the tree walk. The redwood tree in this forest is a cousin to the Californian redwood, the tallest tree in the world. The tree walk was 20 feet up in the air and we could explore the forest on bridges. It was cool and cold. The bark of the redwood trees is very delicate so we weren’t allowed to touch them.
The Waitomo glowworm cave is a cave with a bunch of glow worms in it. Glow worms are not really worms but they are larvae of a fly called the fungus gant. The fungus gnat look like mosquitoes but they're not exactly the same. The fungus gnats don’t have a mouth so the females only survive for 5 hours and the males only survive for 5 days! The larva or the glow worms attract their food with bioluminescence ( a chemical reaction with the light energy in the animal or plants) and a sticky substance from their mouths. The bugs that they eat think that they are stars so they fly up to them but they get eaten instead.This is the life cycle of the glow worm.
The cave was made of natural limestone; it was so cool and beautiful. I really liked the place, it was so cool I hope I can go there again.
Come back soon for more New Zealand.
Bye
