Wet and wild in Wellington

After 4 days in windy Welly we are waiting to go over the water to the south island. Have had a nice break from farm girling, although I'm not the biggest fan of cities in general, it was a nice change.

Our first day here, although exhausted from a 6am start, we walked all over town exploring for about 5 hours and did a teensy bit of v restrained shopping. Most of this revolved around dollar shops and op shops (charity shops) so didn't feel too bad.

We decided to go out for out first night on the town in ages and go as fairies in fancy dress. Found an astonishing long copper wig in the dollar shop and some sweet baby blue fairy wings and we were very excited. We went back to the hostel to shower and dress and shared a bottle of Cava then headed up to Courtenay Place to a bar/club called Sandwiches where the Trei gig ( a set as part of a student night it turned out) was being held. En route we had a kebab for dinner and danced in the street with some musicians, but we still managed to be among the first in the club. We had a great night but got completely obliterated. We must have had in the region of 12 glasses of sparkling wine each! The crowd were really young and bolshy but the music was good and really high energy. I enjoyed the opportunity to let loose on the dance floor and shake out all my new farm muscles! About quarter to 4 Kim suddenly decided she couldn't go on any longer (huge amounts of drink and a 22 hour day!) so we took a cab back to the hostel and passed out.

We emerged from a drunken sleep at about 2 feeling like absolute crap and to the rainiest windiest day eve. It was like waking up in a Douglas B&B. We whinged our way up to Burger Fuel ( a fabulous quality burger place) and ate a Beetnik veggie burger and some kumara (sweet potato) fries in silent misery. We then sloped over to funky grungy cuba st to a sweet little cafe at 178, Midnight Espresso, where we had chai and juice and things to try and mend our sorry selves. The most we could manage after that was to hobble back to the Hostel and veg out in the tv room. Off drink for the forseeable now!

The next day we felt a fair bit better and walked up through town to Cuba Street to meet Kim's friend Vic who is the press secretary for a cabinet minister in the NZ government. She used to be a tour guide in Asia and gave me tons of helpful and interesting tips.

After lunch we wandered down to Te Papa- the National Museum of NZ. It's a pretty cool museum, very modern and interactive. The first bit we went to was a media exhibition, it has a massive wall screen and then some smaller touchscreen booths where you can choose from thousands of videos and images form a media bank or take pics or videos of yourself, or add text. Then you upload it to these little menu buttons on the wall and use these huge cone things to point and drag images to different bits of the wall. So it's like a huge collaborative collage. Kim and I had a hoot playing with it. Then we wandered around some geological stuff and an earthquale simulator house, then on to the animal section where they have a collossal squid, the largest squid ever caught, from the antarctic. We saw the squid itself (gross) and a 3d movie of it's habitat (cool) and a movie about how they caught it (amazing). The next bit we wandered around was about Maori culture and the settlers from Europe and their stories, all v interesting. The Maori and Pacific Islander carvings and furniture and stuff were really cool and beautiful. We were getting zombie museum eyes by this point so we wandered back to the hostel via a supermarker where we spent 30 dollars on 6 meals worth of food, trying to be good! We then made dinner and monged in front of a couple of movies in the tv room. Then we went up to our room and had a late night craft session then hit the hay!

Yesterday was a beautifully sunshiny and hot day, so we took a cool old cable car up the hill out of Wellington to the botanical gardens, and then wandered down through the gardens over a couple of hours, bringing us back to the city. The gardens were gorgeous with collections of native and exotic trees and plants, including many kinds of fern, the emblem of NZ. We came across a wonderful 'Sun Dial of Human Involvement' which was a sundial which requires you to stand on todays date, with your back to the sun and your arms in the air in order to tell the time, it was really accurate and pretty cool.

We met a funny chinese dude there with an amazing hat covered in badges from all the places he'd been on his travels, it was a like a crazy party helmet and we were most impressed. So impressed in fact that I bought a shiny 3 dollar fern badge as my emblem of NZ and have begun my very own hat of badges! We enjoyed a little snooze under a tree in the flower gardens, took lots of pictures of some huge red butterflies, were amazed by the huge rose garden and delighted by the Frangipani and exotic waterlily collection in the greenhouses. We walked back through a memorial garden/ cemetery. It was sad to see whole families of children passing away in quick succession around the 1870s, when the migrant ship[s were coming in, probably due to some kind of epidemic.

After calling back to the hostel for lunch and watching some Oprah, we headed out for our second run at Te Papa. On the way we came across a rather thrilling school longboat race in the harbour and stopped to watch for a bit. We wandered around an art exhibition covering all different types and periods of art, really varied and interesting, and then we were done with Te Papa and felt quite proud. We couldn't resist a last play on the multimedia wall though!

On the walk back we 'bumped into' Mac's Brewery- a sweet pub with a brewery attached, which you can view from the bar area or a special platform. It's all organically brewed beverages and lots of informative wall art teaching you about how it's made. We shared a giant bowl of fries and slurped down a pint of Apple Macs cider each, v good indeed. As we left we noticed some kind of a carry on down under the quay. There were a bunch of thesps in mad costumes doing some kind of play and an audience in life jackets perched precariously on some old steps down into the quay. We watched for a bit but didn't have much of a clue what was going on so abandoned it and wound our windy way back to the hostel.

We packed up our belongings ready to move out and then managed to comandeer the tv room for Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters, after sitting patiently through Barclays Premier League, then had a couple of pints of cider in the hostel bar and chatted to a Dutch guy, and Italian guy and a Canadian guy about their plans and trips so far, all very jovial.

This morning we were up bright and early to check out at 10, and I booked a night here before my flight to Auckland on the 10th and booked my ferry back from south island so travel plans all in hand there.

Now we are just killing time before the ferry to the south island which departs in a couple of hours. I am really looking forward to the South Island. I've been so bowled over by the beauty of the landscapes and coasts in the North Island and I'm told that the South 'steps it up a gear in the awesome ratings' so I can't wait! Marlborough Sounds is a scattering of islands, inlets and peninsulas and one of the most famous regions for wine production, so I'm all over that. Kaikoura, where Kim's mates are, is a lovely little peninsula with a backdrop of snowtopped mountains, and Nelson is a chilled out artsy little town where I'm hoping to do a bone carving course, so v exciting all round, I'll let you know what it's like!

Much love and missing of all my people as always.

Lucy xxx