After three nights of camping near Mount Taranaki, it was time to start thinking about crossing over to the south island. Hopping islands is achieved by boarding a ferry in Wellington that carries you down to Picton, or vice versa. Living on campgrounds and sleeping in Voodoo is wonderful, but I was definitely longing for some amenities of a larger city. On Tuesday morning, Snow thawed out some White Bait fish. I’m not familiar with it, but according to him it is a rarity and quite expensive. It looked and tasted like long pieces of lump crabmeat to me. We saw an advertisement a few days later in another city for $69 per kilogram, so I guess Snow was right. After the white bait tasting we rocked out for Wellington.
Wellington is a big city and has a big city feel to it. It has been dubbed “Windy Welly” due to the constant flow of gusting winds that, like most other New Zealand weather, attacks when you least expect it. Wellington also serves as New Zealand’s capital with a city population of 164,000. Team Lacy has been utilizing information centers, called i-sites and marked by easy to spot blue signs, in each town/city that they have traveled to. I hit my first I-site in downtown Wellington. This hub puts the “Welcome to Louisiana” center right off Interstate 10 past the Sabine River to shame. Brochures for accommodation and activities lined the walls, organized by price range and location. The center is also staffed with 3-4 capable employees that can do everything from suggest a mid price range Thai joint to booking your first jet boating trip. I inquired about a cheap room close to downtown where I could park Voodoo safely and at the suggestion of the i-site clerk, found myself at Rowena’s lodge. Rowena’s is a cozy little run down hostel tucked right outside the central business district (CBD). I dumped my backpack on my hostel bed and headed out into the city to meet Georgia Cottrell, Mark and Elizabeth’s daughter at St. John’s Bar on the waterfront. The walk through downtown highlighted the well known trendy-hip side of Wellington. I walked past heaps of coffee houses and clubs decked out with modern furniture with well-dressed 20 somethings packed inside sipping 9 dollar lattes. The water front area was quite stunning and I took an extra long stroll along the harbor admiring the mountains and ultra blue water. I was surprised to see teenagers jumping from the harbor into the water as it must have been extremely cold and about a 30 ft. leap.
I met Georgia and two of her roommates, or flatmates as she referred to them at St. John’s bar, which appeared to be at max capacity with people drinking pints of beer and soaking up the afternoon sun. They corrected my misconception that I would have to give up live music in New Zealand, informing me of several festivals and events which I scribbled down furiously to google later on. We also discussed the subtle but intriquing differences between American and Kiwi education systems. When the sun started to set it became quite cold and it was time for me to meet Team Lacy at the Flying Burrito Brothers Mexican restaurant for dinner. We polished off two pitchers of margaritas and heaping plates of fajitas like the seasoned Tex-Mex patrons we are. The food was tasty, a welcome change from all the fish we had been eating, and the only difference we noticed between New Zealand Mexican and American Mexican was that their fajita tortillas were burrito sized and each order included only two. And of course the margaritas were watered down compared to Texas margs. We sat at the table waiting to pay for about 10 minutes before realizing that in New Zealand, once you have been given your check, you take it to the counter yourself and pay for it. We left the restaurant stuffed and satisfied and hit the Wellington streets looking for a little bit of night life.
This led us to a hostel bar called Basement which is as cheesy as it sounds. As it turns out, I would find myself in several cheesy bars over the next few days. I am clearly too old to be frequenting these establishments, but not quite old enough to stand out yet. At least I think so. Basement is your typical stomping ground for 19 to 23 year-olds traveling the country and looking to get closer in proximity to the opposite sex. I found it quite enjoyable to watch the hair-gelled guy with his popped collar polo two sizes too small try to yell over the Black Eyed Peas being blasted at arena volume levels at the drunk girl with a full glass of wine in each hand throwing her neck back in near convulsions of screaming laughter. I am all too familiar with this scene, but it still never fails to amaze me, especially when I realized that it is the same all over the world. But in the end, we didn’t stay amused long and our hearing started to suffer so we made our way out of there. I expected the evening to end after this, but in a strange twist of events it was only getting started. Someone suggested karaoke and someone else seconded that notion and before I knew it I found myself barking out the lyrics to Gloria in a completely empty karaoke bar. Nate did a stunning rendition of Cracklin Rosie in which he rarely had to check the monitor for lyrics. We all sang, we all danced and we all had a brilliant time. Upon returning to the hostel we talked to some interesting young German travelers before retiring to our 6 bedroom dorm where a young man from Chile (or maybe Brazil or Belize) tried to go to sleep as we giggled uncontrollably at the evenings’ events.
The next day was essentially all business for me. I did laundry, booked my ferry crossing and had the cables on my bike installed. I was ready for the south island.
Nelson (Thurs. Fri. 11/26-11/27)
On Thursday I rose early, drove Voodoo down to the docks and loaded her onto a large ferry and got settled on the passenger deck. The ferry crossing across Cook Strait is very scenic and I was lucky enough to have beautiful weather on this three hour tour. I arrived in Picton on the South Island, rendezvoused with Team Lacy (who had crossed over the evening before) and we all set out for Nelson with one thing on our minds: Thanksgiving Dinner. The drive from Picton to Nelson afforded me my first views of the south island. The south island is consistently billed as one of the most beautiful landscapes on the planet and it lived up to this reputation. I was told by someone a few days earlier that it is similar to the scenes in Jurassic Park where the helicopters are flying to the island and this is an effective way to try to visualize it. Nate accompanied me for the snaking drive through the mountains and our jaws were pretty much glued to our chins for most of the ride.
We checked into another 6 bedroom dorm at the largest holiday park in the southern hemisphere, according to the desk clerk. We searched high and low for a turkey that we could cook for Thanksgiving dinner, but were unsuccessful and in the end settled on rustling up four drunk chickens instead. We also made broccoli and rice casserole, mashed potatoes and gravy, cream corn and the best imitation queso we could muster up with the limited ingredients we could find. All in all, it was a huge success and we ate like kings as usual. I had a wonderful Skype video conversation with most of my immediate family and also several members from Mom’s side. One new born baby plus aunts, uncles, cousins and even my 95 year-old grandfather squeezed in front of a webcam and wished us all a happy thanksgiving. One of my younger cousins asked if Nate’s mustache was real and I felt like I should go ahead and publicly clarify that it is. Even though the video cam picture was blurry I cannot exaggerate enough how much of a blessing modern technology is. Seeing my family really made my day. I have not experienced homesickness yet. I think it has been replaced by a longing desire for my family and friends to be here with me. The video conversation kind of allowed that to happen for a little while.
After cleaning up the kitchen we headed out to the beach to toss the Frisbees around. I tried to teach Team Lacy how to play Quashambo, a game that I helped create with some good friends at a campsite in Texas around this time last year, but it was entirely too windy to play properly and we soon made our way back to the dorm. We agreed to lay down for about 20 minutes before getting up to head out to a bar. That notion drifted away as quickly as it had been drawn up as we were all in deep slumber by about 8:30 pm, and would not stir again until nine o’clock the next morning. Needless to say, my first New Zealand thanksgiving was a roaring success.
Short Circuits:
- I want to thank everyone who has posted comments on the blog, emailed and facebooked me. It may be hard to believe, but hearing from y'all is just as exciting to me as all the adventures I write about. I love to read about what is going on in the states in your lives, so please keep the communications coming. I may not always be able to send an adequate response, but you can rest assured that I read every single transmission and I am always thinking of you.
- I have been posting interchangeable words on the blog pretty regularly now. I have even started to mix a few of them into my own speech. However, I have encountered one that really aggaravates the day lights out of me. That word is queue. When people want to reference a group of people standing one behind the other, they use the word queue. We use the word line as in "Dammit the portapotty lines at ACL are long". Where as they might say something like "Bugger, the bloody toilet queues are full at ACL." And for some reason, this really grinds my gears.......
- I've added a few little gadgets to the side of the blog, I hope you enjoy them. I have also updated the photos BUT they go further ahead in time than I have written about, so you may want to wait to look at them if you care about spoilers at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment