As it happens my path has once again aligned with CB’s and we have been reunited to take another road trip together. CB and Audrey are heading out to see some of Asia in a few days and so are driving to Wellington to see some of his family before flying out to Singapore from there. I am also in the area to get a ferry to Wellington so our timing has worked out perfectly for us to make the trip together as an unstoppable trio.
It all works out better for us as we have managed to get some accommodation together in Picton (where the Ferry leaves from) which has saved us a little money and it has saved me getting a bus from Nelson and also messing about dragging everything onto the 
ferry since I can just dive in the car with them and drive on.
While we are in Picton we have ended up wandering into an aquarium just in time for the feeding of the large fish and were somehow sweet talked into going in for a look around. It wasn’t the biggest of places but it was still pretty interesting to see what they had there. In the larger fish tank there were some pretty large grouper fish that I wouldn’t want to mess with on a dark night. Just by looking at this fish you could see its power and it was about the size of a 10 year old child. I would have referred to it as a massive Grouper, however I have seen them online before and they can grow up to the size of a small car so are officially one of the scariest things in the sea. Although they don’t usually attach humans the huge ones could easily swallow a person whole so I don’t think I would really want to find out how friendly they would be up close. In that tank there was also a large male stingray that came all the way up to the glass when it wanted to be fed as it knew exactly what was going on when it saw the crowd start to gather.
As well as all the fish they also had a creature called a Tuatara which is a reptile that looks similar to a lizard however it isn’t part of the lizard family. This “lizard like” creature has some different attributes such as soft skin (as opposed to most lizards tough bodies) and it also doesn’t have any ears which is one of the things that they use to age lizards by looking at their ear bones when they die. The Tuatara is a native to New Zealand are some of the oldest creatures in the world, more closely related to a Dinosaur than a modern lizard today. It seems that they managed to survive in the eco-system of New Zealand and the low predator rate helped them to not die out. the introduction of other animal into the eco-system has however killed out a large portion of the population but the Tuatara still live on many of the islands dotted around the cost of New Zealand.
I think by far the craziest fact that they mentioned about the Tuatara is about the potential age they can live up too. Due to their very low activity levels the Tuatara don’t expend much energy and so also don’t have to eat that often. This has other effects meaning that their metabolism is much slower and they whole bodies work at a slower speed. If a Tuatara is relaxed then its heart can beat as slowly as 2 beats per minute and they can breath once a minute. All of these factors lead researches to believe that a Tuatara could live to be over 250 years old without any issues. At the moment they are having to work on that as a guess since there have not been able Tuatara in captivity for that long so it isn’t possible for them to get an accurate reading. The ones that they did have were 8 yrs old and 30 years old and were still considered quite young as the adult Tuatara done start reproducing until they are in their 80’s!
Sorry for suddenly going on a tangent of reptile facts, 
but I find it really interesting that there is a creature that is from so long ago that hasn’t been wiped out by crazy nature or by man that is almost pre-historic and probably were wondering around the earth at the same time as the dinosaurs!
Anyway tomorrow it is time to set sail for Wellington so I really should start doing some research to find out what there is to do there to keep me amused! I suppose I should have done this earlier but plans never work out as they should.