Wellington Day 2

Today Ben and Darlene showed us some of their favourite hang outs.

We took a tour through the Weta Cave, the home of all the special effects for over 100 movies including King Kong, The Frighteners, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Halo 3 shorts, and the Narnia series. In the heart of a quiet Wellington suburb is a warehouse block containing armor and weapon fabrication, make-up, artistic design, and computer animation. For the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Weta Studio employed 4500 people. The bloke who gave us a tour played a drunk in the Prancing Pony and years later he still looked the part.

After the Weta Cave tour we went to Breaker Bay and collected pua shells. The waves were amazing, and the wind gusting created some major chop.

We went for chai teas and lunch at the Maranui Surfing Life Saving Club. It is right on a beach and the whole side of the building is windows overlooking the water. The food was amazing too!

Tomorrow, we leave for Rangiwahia, but we can't wait to come back to Windy Welly!

We have arrived!

After 24 hours traveling, Kristine and I walked through the Wellington airport as Canad-aliens on foreign soil.



Alice dropped us off at the airport and we charmed our way through the baggage checking with the first bag 3.5 pounds over and all the others within a half a pound of the 50lb maximum. We departed from Calgary on 7:15pm on July 27th.

In Vancouver we had a last Canadian meal at White Spot because our flight to Sydney departed at 11:50pm. We were very greatful for the meal when we saw the plain plane fare. We felt very sympathetic for the lady beside us who ordered the vegetarian meal and was served three meals of curry.

The flight from Sydney to Wellington was aboard an Air New Zealand. When the steward came down the aisle with a water decanter with a slice of lemon in, we knew we were amongst friends!

Darlene welcomed us at the airport with a hug. Kristine's two checked bags hadn't made the flight from Sydney but they arrived the next morning. A shower and bed have never felt so good.

On Friday morning, Ben and Darlene took us for a quick tour of Wellington. We stopped off at the Post Office and applied for our IRD (tax) numbers and then tried to cash the certified bank draft we had purchased at Royal Bank. The bank accepted our passports as identification and was able to verify the bank draft as authentic, but refused to cash it. Next time we'll stick to Traveler's Cheques.

Thankfully, the ANZ service representative who was assisting us took pity on us and spoke with her manager who agreed to release $500 of our NZ dollars from our account. We had been planning on purchasing a vehicle in Wellington to drive to Rangiwahia but that will have to wait for 3-5 business days :-(