Wellington

Oceania » New Zealand » North Island
April 8th 2015

Published: April 8th 2015

Second last day in NZ. Today we took a coach tour of the city. Wellington literally hugs the coast of the North Island. When the city was being planned, these guys in England were chosen to set up the streets. Now they were in England looking at a chart someone had drawn somewhere else and they got to lay out the streets. Not realizing that there was only a narrow strip of coastline backed by lots of hills, they laid out grid line streets. When it came to actually building roads, the builders had to put in streets even if they went nowhere. On one road alone there were two street names and all that was attached to the name was a very long set of stairs that never went to a house or another road. The hills are so steep that many of the people living up,top have their own cable cards on rails running up the side of the hill. The roads along the water outside the business district are even scarier. There are no wide shoulders here. There is a curb and about six inches of shoulder before the side drops off. There are very few beaches along the water either, so no chance to be lulled into a sense of well being before the next drop shows up. I should be used to it, quite a few like it in the Southern Alps. Am truly grateful that we were in a small coach, not a 63 person bus. We stopped at this great place, Sir Peter Jackson's Weta Cave, the place where a lot of the weapons and backdrops are formed for his movies - Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Avatar and TinTin to name a few. We could not get in to the documentary today, so several of us are going back tomorrow on our free time. Took some pictures on my phone, just have to figure out how to get them off. Anyway, this Weta (named after an ugly NZ bug) hires creative people from all over the world to just be creative. No degree is needed, if you are creative and interested in film, you apply and take your chances. We also visited the Kiwi Parliament houses. Their government is based on British Parliament, and so much easier than the US to get a bill in to be voted on. Only takes 25,000 signatures to get government to look at it. In the lobby was an NZ flag discovered in the basement of the World Trade Center during the cleanup and presented to the Prime Minister, Helen Clark, in 2002. There was also the original petition signed by 24,000 women in 1893 to get the right to vote. It was one large roll hooked between to rollers so could be moved. Tonight I had my first pizza in over a month. Yummy! Will try to sendam blog about last day tomorrow, but if not, definitely when I get home. This was the dream of a lifetime trip, I am so glad I took it!

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