Day 206-207: Wellington, New Zealand

---

Thursday, August 20th

We slept late and when Clive and Lize left for work, Luki (real name Tululah, aka Lulu) came crawling into bed with us. After a shower and breakfast Ferdi made a few calls. One of these was to the NZ police in Wellington to book fingerprinting. The first officer he spoke to started speaking Afrikaans to him the moment he mentioned fingerprints. Was Ferdi's accent that bad or did the officer just make a lucky guess? Either way, Ferdi was put through to the right department and booked the fingerprints for tomorrow at noon.

Lize and Clive have a beautiful house in Brooklyn, just outside the city. It's nice and roomy and the interior is light with a lot of warm wood. Plus there's Luki, who runs the household and is very cute.

It was another beautiful sunny day in NZ. We drove into the city to take a ride on the Wellington Cable Car. It's not a cable car the way we know them in SA. This is a tram that is pulled up the hill by a cable, traveling from Lambton Quay to the Botanical Gardens at the top of Upland Road. We purchased our return tickets and boarded the car. Ten minutes later we were at the top where we visited the Cable Car museum, had lunch in the park and hot chocolate at a nearby cafe.

We took the Cable Car back down and drove to Weta Cave. This is the company responsible for all the Lord of the Rings props and special effects, as well as King Kong, iRobot, etc etc etc. The list goes on. The "Cave" is an exhibition area of some of the props and things used during the making of these films. On the way there we drove past Park Road Post-Production, Peter Jackson's post facilities. Oh, how Ferdi would love to get a job there! Anyway... At Weta we watched a short "Behind the scenes" film, then wandered amongst the displays. They had a lot of things for sale, but some of these cost more than a good second hand car!

We drove back home, feeling a little like we're wasting our lives. Seeing those people using and developing their talents made our unused talents stir. Traveling is great, but one can't help but feel useless when you see what some people produce.

Back home Clive cooked up a huge meal and Lize opened a bottle of wine from Paarl (Cape Town). We had a warm and chatty evening around the dinner table.

Today's highlights:
1. Riding the Wellington Cable Car.
2. Visiting the Weta Cave.
3. Good food, good wine, and great company.

Impressions of NZ:
Wellington feels much colder than Auckland.

Friday, August 21st

We made a delicious breakfast, packed a picnic lunch, then drove into the city to get our fingerprints taken at the police station. We needed the prints to get police clearance from SA to prove to the NZ government that we're "of good character" and should be allowed to stay and work here in the future.

With that done we popped onto the internet to pay the SA police, then went in search of a shop where we could print the proof of payment. We found an internet shop where we had the printing done. Afterwards we realized that we didn't have change and neither did the shop owner. He was very friendly and said we could come pay him when we found some change.

Off we went to the Postshop (New Zealand’s postal service) to courier the papers over to SA. We needed to include a pre-paid courier bag so that the SAPS could courier the certificates back to us. After filling in four bags with all the details we found that they can send it to SA but the pre-paid bags can't be used to courier from SA back to NZ. This was a very expensive mistake on our part because we had to pay for the bags even though we're not using them now. We'll probably be able to use them in the future, so hopefully it wasn't a total waste. Ferdi had gotten change to pay for our parking and before leaving we paid the friendly (and trusting) guy for the printing.

Back in the van we phoned DHL, but as usual they were so expensive it was shocking! We decided to investigate some other options before parting with that much cash.

We headed to the Wellington Wind Turbine, situated atop Mt Victoria. Here we had our lunch (and some divine cookies) while enjoying the great views of Wellington.

Back home we curled up on the couch and ate chocolates while watching a DVD. Lize and Clive were meeting friends for drinks after work but we didn't feel like going out. Instead we stayed in and cooked a nice curry dinner.

Today's highlights:
1. Getting our fingerprints done.
2. Meeting the friendly internet guy.
3. Movie and chocolates on the couch.
4. Great curry dinner.

Impressions of NZ:
Navigating using Emily in Wellington city is hard. Some of the streets are so narrow and short that she can't always tell where you are. Oh, and when your use a car in Wellington city, bring a bag of change. Parking is astronomically expensive.

---

Photos

Our home for a few days
Thanks Clive, Lize and Luki

Queen of the castle
Luki rules supreme

All aboard!
Cable Car Museum