Wellington

---

Took the ferry from Picton to NZ's capital city, Wellington. After two months on the South Island, Wellington feels like a big city to me. There are a lot of cars, tall buildings and noisy bars. It is Easter weekend and many places are closed for the public holidays so I think this was not the best time to visit the city as although I enjoyed my time here, I was not sad to leave.

Highlights of Wellington were getting the historic cable car (more of a tram really) up to the Botanic Gardens and the observatories which had some excellent films of the Cassini missions to Saturn and the moon landings. Also a planetarium show introducing me to the Southern night sky which I had long been wondering about. The much talked about Te Papa museum had some good fun hands on science exhibits and a good range of Maori artefacts but having been in New Zealand two months now, I felt I had seen a lot of it before.

I had some good evenings in Welllington - meeting up with Karen (who I'd first met with Astrid on Stewart Island), Ute (Abel Tasman) and I also had a good evening at the cinema with a Northern Irish lass, Heather. We saw a documentary film about the best selling US country-inspired band Dixie Chicks and the massive media trouble they got into when one of them said she was ashamed George W Bush was from Texas at a concert in Shepherds Bush empire in the run up to the Iraq War. The film was excellently made but did not portray either the American public or its leaders in a flattering light.

Easter Sunday Mass at the cathedral with the Archbishop and a good choir was really lovely. Some of the blessings were in Maori.

---