After a good first afternoon the weather in Wellington has been a bit average compared to Auckland. Walking around this bird sanctuary in shorts and a t-shirt was manageable but not ideal. The "experience" was a forest reserve set up to preserve the wildlife and keep out pests like possums and rats and such, and which mostly contained birds - can't they just fly away? The fun part I guess was trying to spot the different birds they had marked on the map and get a picture if they ever stopped - gotta catch 'em all. Only at the very end of the circuit did we see some flightless birds, the Takahe, and not even one Kiwi. There was also some kind of "gold mine" but you couldn't go into it beyond the entrance tunnel.
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| The sanctuary entrance. |
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| Also the sanctuary. |
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| Green bird! |
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| Black bird! |
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| Walking bird! (now where's the surfin' bird) |
For lunch I got another energy drink, this time Nos energy drink which was fairly similar to the Demon drinks so I give it an 8 out of 10. Then it was off to the Reserve Bank Of New Zealand Museum which was free but they don't give out samples. The museum was just one large room but it had a few interesting artifacts around like:
- Currency samples, now very similar to Australian money and even printed in Melbourne
- Finding out they don't use five cents anymore (fun fact for the day)
- Zimbabwe One Hundred Trillion Dollar note
They were setting up for the monthly interest rate announcement the next morning apparently.
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| Looks complicated, not sure exactly what it was meant to prove. |
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| That's one thing to thank Mugabe for. |
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| Some more stable currency. |
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| Now I just need to know what an OCR announcement is. |
Just across the road it was time for one of the Parliament Building tours, but sadly you cannot take your camera along. The presenter wasn't too bad and he took us through a few rooms that I cannot remember the names of. We also got to go into the upstairs balcony while a question time session was on, but the questions weren't very interesting so we didn't stay for much of that.
Walking down Lambton Quay yesterday I saw an advertisment for an in-store appearance of some Wellington Phoenix soccer players at the Adidas store, so I went back today to quickly check that out. On the internet it said that Carlos Hernandez, formerly of the Melbourne Victory, would be one of the players but that it was "subject to change". So yeah, he didn't bother to show up of course, there was some guy called Leo who turns out to be a midfielder Leo Bertos, and maybe there was another guy but I didn't catch his name. It could have been great if Ernie Merrick had shown up too...
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| These guys. |
After that let down I planned to hike up to the top of Tinakori Hill which is on the opposite side of the city to Mount Victoria. Jason wasn't interested in more walking so he went off elsewhere while I tried to figure my way up the hill with a couple of vague Google Maps photos on my camera to use as a guide. I ran into some weirdo as I was passing through the Botanic Gardens who just kept walking with me and talking about his bad luck story - his "Skull Candy" headphones had broken and he was trying to find an electronics or remote control car store to get them fixed up. Bizarre, and he just wouldn't go away either, I had to pretend I was walking back the other way just to lose him.
I was a little unsure if I was taking the correct path uphill, as it was a suburban area and there was some steps that I thought might be leading into someone's house instead of the next street up the hill, but eventually I found the lookout point. I suppose it was worth the effort but the view down into Wellington was a little obstructed by all of the tall trees. I took an alternative path through the Botanic Gardens on the way down, past some more strange sculptures.
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| Starting the long and confusing road uphill. |
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| Tinakori Hill lookout. |
Dinner was just a vegetable curry and rice at a Malaysian restaurant, but after a week of fast food restaurants it was a huge relief to get something different at last. They also had this fantastic sweet roti bread.
Wellington: 6/10
Good
- Better than our capital city (probably)
- Easy to get around on foot
- Train ticket inspectors sell tickets
Bad
- Less to do than Auckland
- Nearly everything shuts down at 5pm
- No stores selling frozen yoghurt
- Not many stores selling magnets
Missed Out
- Brooklyn Wind Turbine at Polhill Reserve
- Otari-Wilton's bush reserve
- Red Rocks coastal walk (the seals don't arrive until May apparently)
- The Cricket Museum
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