Wellington

After eight days in our little campervan, we arrived in Wellington to spend some time with Kevin’s friend, Michal. We dropped the campervan off and toured the museums on the wharf. To our amazement, there were more museums than we could possibly see in one day, a few favorites were the Wellington museum of land and sea, the Olympic museum and the Te Papa.

Michal, Chris and 3-year old son Alex were gracious hosts and we learned that life boiled down to only two options; 1. Doing what needs to be done or 2. Go to bed! We also learned an amazing amount of barbequing skills from goat leg curry with fresh ground spices to Asian stir fry. We ate like royalty and felt like we were on the Master Chef show.

Michal owns the hippest doggy daycare and dog walk businesses in town (Hound Lounge and EmBarkers). We ventured on a few dog walks and attended the Halloween Trick and Treat party for her clients and their daaawgz. The dogs all came dressed in Halloween costumes and were enticed with doggy treats to learn how to perform a variety of tricks.

We got our first glimpse of a live Kiwi in the nocturnal exhibit at the Wellington Zoo where Alex showed us around as our tour guide.

Wellington is famous for two things: wind and Weta Caves (production studio for Lord of the Rings). We explored the city via lovely walking trails and found flying fox (zip lines) play grounds scattered about. Although we felt like we had to walk at an angle to combat the gale force winds we had “an adventure to rule all adventures” when we arrived at Weta Caves and were greeted by Gollum.

It was nice to relax and hang out with friends and ponder the little differences in how we live. One small example is how kiwis hang washed clothes on the line to dry even in the cloudy wet Seattle-like weather, but our HOAs specifically rule against them.