Located on the waterfront (and also positioned on stabilizers to keep it from shaking during an earthquake) Te Papa means "Our Place" in Maori and it felt like our place. We owned the museum in 3 hours. So a few of the highlights:
GIANT SQUID- New Zealand is home of one of the few or the only (unclear) giant squids on display. This deep sea creature is disgusting. It has a beak like a parrot (I know you're probably gagging already, because I was). The squid has fully rotating suckers that have small hooks on them, a killing machine. It's eye is the size of a soccer ball. The Squid, however, like every giant squid that has been found, was female. She hooked on to a deep-fishing boat's line and held on as it was cranked up (she is not the brightest squid). So we watched the video of this giant squid, the color of a Ruby Grapefruit, being pulled up from the ocean with it's long tentacles and in a way, it was beautiful. Now it's lying in some sort of preserving jelly under a glass case for viewers to admire.
Yum.
Te Papa also houses numerous Maori carvings, wakas and building representations. It is the sole place to have a cultural experience from a learned perspective as this is the main and, from what we understand, the only real museum in New Zealand.
A sailor went to sea sea sea to see what he could see see see...
In addition to the traditional Maori artifacts, there were modern sculptures as well as the "Black Hole". The "Black Hole" is a giant black carpeted circle at the center of the Te Papa. The following pictures display how we had fun with this one:
Brian and I, being children at heart, enjoyed the interactive aspects of the museum. Yes, we watched the 3-D show of the Squid being pulled up from the ocean and yes we stood in an exhibit house that shook to represent an earthquake as well as played with many other touch screen games... so as you can imagine, we had fun.
One interactive piece stands out most for both of us. This piece separated different parts of a particular song and allowed the viewer to play parts of the song that pleased them, or all parts. In order to play the elements of the song, one only needed to place their hand over a circle, triggering a sensor that started the music. Fat Freddy's Drop, "Roady" was our personal favorite.
Go DJ! That's my DJ!
The final aspect that I will elaborate on is the "myspace" like room. In the room, there were multiple large screens running along one wall. Using a large white controller, you could click on an image on the screen and move it around. At first glance, this seems kind of lame until you realize that you can take a picture of yourself, upload it to the main screen and play with it! Being the narcissists that we are... Brian and I took a few photos and short videos of ourselves. FUN!
Narcissism at its best.
After a day of fun, we had some Mexican tacos that were pretty okay. Have we mentioned how much we MISS the burritos from the Mission?!
Taking advantage of the Te Papa's stage.
love the name of this post
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