More mayhem in Welly

Since the last time we spoke I have participated in a few activities which are either a little out of my comfort zone or just a little out of the ordinary for me. As an example, on Tuesday a couple of weeks ago Brian, myself, Pablo and Lou (Pablo’s flatmate) decided to go fishing off Oriental Parade. Oriental Bay, for those who don’t know, is the bay where the artificial beach against Wellington city has been created. Sufficed to say we didn’t catch anything.. In fact, we somehow managed to lose a hook amongst the seaweed!! There were a few fish around though – about the same size as the hook we were using.. Ah, fun times.. Later that night, Brian, being from Glasgow, cooked us a traditional Scottish haggis! Sheep’s lungs, hearts, kidney, liver all minced up with spices and then cooked inside a sheep’s stomach – essentially a sheep that’s been seasoned then turned inside out.. To be honest, that sounds utterly vile to me, but it was actually really tasty! Sort of like meatloaf. You have to try haggis if you haven’t already, you won’t regret it!!!
After a big night of partying on Friday night, I headed to Te Papa museum on Saturday to finish off the bottom 3 floors. On my way back I spotted a 65-year old deaf and mute man who was showing off his motorbike which he has ridden through 36 countries – a total of 235,600km! He was asking for donations to fund the next leg of his trip however, being the stingy backpacker that I am, I couldn’t spare a single cent.. Besides, you don’t see me asking strangers for petrol money so I can drive to Gisborne for the weekend now do you? :P
Sunday came and it was an absolutely marvellous day so Brian, Suze and I took Tana on a road trip to Martinborough, a couple of hours east of Welly, for some wine tasting and basking in the sun. We found some really nice Wairarapa wines and just had a generally relaxing (if not tiring) afternoon walking from winery to winery in this small country town.
The next Thursday I went indoor rock climbing with Sash and a couple of his mates. It’s been a couple of years since I’d done any sort of climbing (the last time being with Mikie back in Adelaide – how’s Melbourne treating you dude?) so I tired fairly quickly but still had a lot of fun. I’ll get back in there hopefully before I leave Wellington.
That Friday was another slightly out of character day for me in that I went sailing with Brian, Pablo and Lou. Again, those who know me know I’m not all the big on large bodies of water and this time we weren’t just floating in a sea kayak on a completely calm lake. This time there was wind, there was tipping of the boat, there were some very white knuckles holding onto the railings on the opposite side. And that was just in the first couple of minutes.. After that I became a little more comfortable with the way the boat (seemingly to me at the time) almost tipped onto its side as we raced along with about 10 others to win a bottle of rum. I ended up really enjoying the experience once I had learnt to trust the expertise of our skipper, Ken. We didn’t win the race, but got sufficiently wasted that night anyway..
After sluggishly awakening late morning, Brian and I made our way down to Queens Wharf to watch the annual Chinese Dragon Boat races that are held in the harbour to coincide with the Chinese New Year. Teams from regions all over the country came to compete and they seemed to enjoy themselves – I think we were a bit too hung over to pay attention to which team was which so we instead just walked around the surrounding stalls and festivities. Later in the night there were a bunch of circus performers doing trapeze, rope and fire acts – they accidentally messed up one of the stunts and one of the guys burnt himself on the flaming rope.. Ouch! The mistake aside, it was fascinating to watch their mastery of their acrobatic skills.
A few hangovers and some unspeakable nights later, we arrive at this weekend just gone.. Saturday brought wind, rain, St. Paddy and SummerSet to Wellington. Big St. Paddy’s celebrations going on all day all over the country, people out drinking from 10am – I could only imagine what it would have been like for Adam and Eva in Scotland!!! SummerSet was a concert held in the Basin Reserve near my Adelaide Road flat. From 3pm to 11pm, there were DJs from NZ and the UK, along with locals Shapeshifter and Fat Freddy’s Drop pumping out their own style of drum‘n’bass and dub, respectively. An awesome day was had with a lot of crazy dancing to top it all off.
Back at work today in what will soon be my last week at the Polytech before my contract expires and I am again unemployed. I’m actually really looking forward to not having to work and just chilling out (having said that, I’m quite chilled out here at the Poly anyway – I’m currently competing in a table tennis championship, and losing quite respectively I feel)! It’s getting to that point where I’m ready to move on from Wellington because not only is work finishing, but a few people that I’ve come to enjoy spending time with at the hostel are now leaving very soon too - Brian is also leaving on Sunday, for the South Island.

I’ll try post a little more frequently in future just to keep you in the loop... And no Gabrielle, NZ hasn’t fallen in a hole – it probably just got a little drunk and slept in..

Photos:
1. Fishin wit da boyz
2. The motorcycle traveller pointing out his route across the globe to interested onlookers
3. Just read the description........ in the Te Papa museum
4. Brian, myself and Suze getting drunk off free wine in Martinborough! Yay!
5. Me after the first few moments of pure terror..
6. Da boyz again - Awesome fun!
7. Me (middle) and some randoms having a go at the circus ropes
8. The water feature in the centre of Cuba Street - pretty cool!