While looking for cheap flights to New Zealand, I had a lot on my mind. Actually, I wanted to make the most of it and see all the places there were on the way. First a thought of getting Flights from London to Sydney and Sydney to Wellington struck my mind, as they are usually cheaper. But the Air New Zealand’s cheap direct flights to Auckland were also a catch. Any ways, I ended up buying last minute flights offers with the cheapest airline to Wellington.

In Wellington one thing on the top of my lists was to see the “red pandas”. There are not many places in the world where you can see them, feed them or take photos with them. Australia and New Zealand are renowned for the awesome opportunities they provide in Kuala and Kangaroos sanctuaries like hand feeding animals and walking around them, taking photos with no bars or cages as a hindrance. So if you want to get an entire new experience of seeing the wild animals in a zoo, go for the Wellington zoo.

Going to the zoo requires getting up early, (which is easy after a jetlag). One should also check for the entrance fee, opening hours, national holidays and timings of the zoo before leaving. The wellington zoo is located at 200 Daniell Street in Newtown, in the South of Wellington. There are local busses to the zoo, which are the most convenient way to begin exploring a country and as a secondary advantage, you don’t have to look or pay for car park!

Though I had planned around 3 hours to spend in the zoo and set out for the botanic gardens afterwards, but with more than 500 animals and over a 100 species, Wellington Zoo is spellbinding. The collection is diverse, huge and also includes some of the critically endangered species such as the Campbell Island teals and the Sumatran tigers. The specialties of the Wellington zoo are the Malayan sun bears and White cheeked gibbons that are unique in New Zealand to Wellington zoo only. The daily talk sessions, guided tours are extremely informative and even if you are dragged to the zoo unwillingly to keep you kids company, you will walk out with love for nearly half of the animals there.

Take your cameras and extra rolls for there will be a lot to see there. You will get up close to cheetahs, big cats and giraffes as part of a close encounter, for me a dozen pictures with the cutest and friendly red pandas are one of the best ones in my Wellington holiday album.