Our time in Wellington was a needed break from the outdoors; it was really nice to spend a few days in the city. And i have to say, a few days was just the right amount of time. I stayed with Paul in his apartment and it was so nice to see him and catch up after such a long time. For those of you who don't know him, Paul is a friend of mine who used to live in Somerset but moved to California sophomore year of high school. I found out earlier this semester that he was studying abroad in NZ as well - he in Christchurch. After the earthquakes he transferred up to Wellington and when i found that out and we finalized our plans for break i figured it was worth a shot to see if he was going to be around during the time i would be there. Turns out that he would be arriving back in Wellington from his break travels the same night i would be getting in, so it worked out great. Meanwhile, Alex and Suzi stayed with a bunch of student life guys. It was a really great few days. In a nutshell... We toured the museum, which is the NZ national museum, so it's huge and super cool. We made dinner with Suzi and Alex (which was awesome - enchiladas and chips and cornbread and apple crisp and ice cream) at the Student Life guys' (who are awesome) flat and hung out with them (which was awesome) and played games and such. They really are great guys, i feel so blessed to have met them. The one guy, Cody, introduced me to orange chocolate chip ice cream, which i've seen here but this has never appealed to me, as mixing orange and chocolate just doesn't sound good. Well, he just wasn't having this, as orange choc chip is his absolute fav, so he and Max (one of the other sl guys) went to the store and bought a tub of it and fed me. Well...i have to say, it was actually really good. The ice cream just tastes like a creamsicle, so how could it not be good? Anyways, i will never complain about finding a new ice cream flavor that i like. Also, fun fact, one of the other sl guys is named Leigh, which is the more rare spelling and also my middle name. The next day we spent some time down by the wharf, where Alex obviously jumped off of a whole bunch of stuff while i took pictures of him almost freezing to death because of the cold water. We walked around the city and stopped at a few cafes, one of which served the best hot chocolate i have ever had in my entire life. We also went to a place called the Midnight Expresso, where we met Tammy, a girl from California who is visiting NZ and being a WOOFer (Workers On Organic Farms) for a while over here. She hung out with us until we left, super fun girl. Later that night we met up with Sam, a friend from Australearn who we met way at the beginning of the semester. We ate at a Thai restaurant (my first Thai food, yum!) and went to a sports bar to watch the end of the Breakers vs. Cairns basketball game - a big deal thing because it's an Aussie league and the NZ team won, WOOT! Then we went to watch the royal wedding. Leigh was nice enough to drive us back to Paul's apartment after the wedding and on the way we noticed a lady slumped over on the curb and we stopped to see if she needed help. Turns out she was drunk out of her mind. We drove around for quite a while trying to figure out where she lived so we could take her home but that didn't really work out. We finally ended up taking her to the hospital. It was quite an interesting evening but a really neat opportunity to do what we could to show Christ's love to a stranger. We also spent some time roaming the botanic gardens before heading back on the ferry on Saturday. Man, those gardens are nuts. Soooo huge! We played on this weirdo tree, i think it's called the trippy tree?? (see below), at the beginning of the gardens. It looks like a giant hedge but you can climb on the inside and get to the top and look out and see the whole city, it's pretty neat.
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| L-R: Paul, Tammy, Alex, Suzi, me |
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| Alex in the air |
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| Suzi & i |
So...after all of that, the three of us ferried back to the south island to make out way back down to Dunedin. Unfortunately my camera died right at the end of our Wellington trip so i don't have any pictures of the west coast, which was phenomenal, by the way. Hah, though one thing that i definitely need to recount is the sandfly massacre that occurred on our way back. Ohhh, it was bad. We stopped along the side of the road to take some pictures of this amazing part of the coast where we'd been driving. I got out and was taking a picture with Alex's camera when i heard something and noticed that something strange was happening in the car. I went back to it (i was driving) and realized that in the very short amount of time we had been stopped, sandflies had totally invaded Lucille and were just attacking my poor passengers, and soon me as well. The only way to get rid of them is to kill them and/or move fast enough that they can't keep up. So i peeled out, we put all of the windows down, and took off down the road, yelling all the way because these awful things were all over us, just eating us alive. We took every chance we got to smash them, as it was either they suck our blood or we kill them. I sooooo wish i had a video of this moment, because it would be absolutely hysterical. I am driving down the highway, trying not to wreck us, smacking myself everywhere (but mostly my feet) and occasionally the windshield in front of me to try and kill them, all of us are shouting and hitting each other to get rid of the flies, and moaning because of the pain of the bites. It was absolutely ridiculous. Basically a sandfly holocaust, to be honest. So i mentioned in my previous post that i had thought that my feet were bad from the sandflies at Abel Tasman...nothing compared to what i dealt with from this situation. For the next several nights i would wake up itching my feet. And i will have permanent scars from the bites. Those sandflies don't want me to ever forget that massacre.
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| my poor poor feet [+ sweet chaco tanlines] |
Other than the doom of the sandflies, which i can safely rank as my least favorite thing about my NZ experience, we had a jolly good time on the west coast. We stopped at both glaciers, Fox and Franz Joseph, and just marveled at the beauty of God's creation. This coming weekend we will be heading back that way to hike part of the Copland Track, a good tramp with some natural hotsprings and big mountains to appreciate. More to come on our latest adventures and details of my time so far with Spencer : )
nice chaco tan lines!
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