Zealandia!!

Hello from the bottom of the world. Will write more later when I get time by meanwhile here are some pictures....

Awesome tree ferns.

The flower of the Nikau Palm.

We took an amazing hike along the ocean. The palms are called Nikau palms and they are only found in a small band of latitude in New Zealand.

A sweet arch someone had made on the beach.

The white things are the anal filaments of a scale insect called Assimile. It is sucking sugar water from the tree and excreting leftover sugar called honeydey through the filament and then other insects, I think mainly wasps, eat the honeydew. This is a common practice, but this particular insect has the longest anal filament in the world!

Some awesome New Zealand trees.

There were some really cool metal structures at the Botanic Gardens. This one had a complex series of mechanical processes that were powered by water and eventually all of these different things would spin around. Quite fun.

My intrepid travel companions Craig and Marie.