Auckland!

I spent the weekend in New Zealand's largest city, at the north end of the north island. The impetus for the trip was a visit to Auckland from some fish-folk from Seattle for a conference. We met up and then do what fisheries scientists do best together - look at fish, drink beer, and eat fried things.

I poached this picture from wikipedia (I need to start remembering my camera!). It's SkyTower, a bit like the Space Needle back in Seattle, except you can bungee jump off this (not something I'm interested in but fun to watch).

Auckland actually had a very Seattle-ish feel considering that it was raining buckets most of the weekend! The New Zealand International Beer Festival still went off, though. For the most part it consisted of really excellent microbrews, although there were a few domestic booths there. The presence of a Miller booth was particularly ominous - someone please shoot me if you see me drinking crap American domestic beer in a land of foreign microbrew. It'd be like eating Wonderbread in France - a true crime against good taste.

We also visited Kelly Tarleton's Underwater and Antarctic Experience (or something like that). A replica of Scott's Antarctic base camp left me wanting to visit (ok the penguin exhibit had quite a bit to do with that). They also had some great tanks of rays and a cool tunnels full of seven-gilled sharks and rocky reef fish. For a privately owned exhibit I was really impressed with the accuracy of the information presented and the understatement of the place. Sometimes those places can come off as circus sideshows or theme parks.

It was really good hanging out with some peeps from Seattle - I didn't realize how much I miss familiar faces until this weekend.

But now it's out into the field! I'm back at the end of the week, hopefully with beautiful photos...