Windy Welly

Windy Wellington CERTAINLY lives up to its name!!! We woke up today and it was COLD and WINDY! We couldn't believe it! We both put on our jeans and sweatshirts to head out to explore the city! (I should probably *asterisk* this and say - it was about 65 degrees...relative weather is a real killer :-p).

Before leaving the marina we wandered around a bit and found some pretty fantastic friends - starfish - right in the harbor!

How many starfish do you see in this picture???

Our first stop was Mt. Victoria Lookout, the highest point in Wellington City. We drove all the way to the top (foregoing the 2 hour hiking experience since we lost a day in the city...and also because I'm lazy...) and were greeted with a beautiful view around the city (and LOTS more wind!)

There is a monument on the top of Mt. Victoria dedicated to Byrd and Sipe, New Zealand explorers who were the first to trek into Antarctica. Their research and work laid the groundwork for the Antarctic Treaty, which basically said that Antarctica would never be divided or owned by anyone, waste could never be deposited there, and that it would only be used for research.

We also discovered that there is apparently a thing called the "Aurora Australis", which is the "Southern Lights", just like we have the Aurora Borealis in the north! Who knew! Unfortunately the lights can't be seen this far north (New Zealand), but still pretty cool to learn!

After eating lunch on the mountain (PB & J's - Jon wasn't quite ready for them yet after Africa... so maybe no more for a little while...) we headed a ways out of town to visit the Weta Cave.

Weta is the company behind basically ALL special effects and make up for a whole slew of movies, including but not limited to:

- every Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movie
- Avatar
- King Kong
- Planet of the Apes
- The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin
- The Avengers
- Iron Man 3

and sooooooo many more than I can think of right now. The "miniseum" as they called it has a number of small replicas that they've created for use in these movies (from King Kong's head to a life-size Gollum from Lord of the Rings) and they also show a 30 minute video which talks about their creations.

This head for the movie took 2 people an entire MONTH to create - it was used to figure out how King Kong's hair would move in different elements...and EACH HAIR was individually placed! WHAAAAATTTTTT?!

The Weta company basically started out as a man and his wife who liked to create sculptures, and connected with and started working with film makers, and things took off from there. They were commissioned on a number of smaller movies which then grew bigger and bigger, until they are now one of the premiere effects companies in the world, with around 25 departments. The departments include everything from making small scale models of sets to make-up artistry, engineering and robotics to digital animation, and honestly anything else you could think of related to creating movie effects. Pretty awesome. While you can pay a hefty price to tour their actual workshop, we decided the minseum had enough awesome stuff for us to see, and so we wandered around for about an hour before heading back into the city.

Oh yea...there were trolls outside too...

Overall just super cool :).

After the museum we made a quick stop at the "WELLINGTON" sign which hangs above the city:

As a result of the Weta company and other movie production/effects companies who have settled in Wellington, it's known around here as kind of the "Hollywood of New Zealand". As such, they have their own sign. It's a bit smaller than the HOLLYWOOD sign in California....

Our next stop was Cuba Street and the Cooks Strait harbor for a wander around the city and a nice craft beer at Max's (mango and apple cider - YUM), before heading back to the car. When we got to the car we took a quick look in our New Zealand guidebook...and discovered that in about 20 hours we'd done everything we set out to do in Wellington... hmm... Pretty good for us considering we lost a day due to Roxanne the Van's temper tantrum and screaming break pads yesterday... So as we began heading back to the carpark, we decided to just forget it and head straight out of the city. On the open road we looked for a free campsite for the night and found one...at Paparua on the coast - a pretty beautiful place to enjoy the sun, sand, and sunset from the privacy of our camper van :).

Fortunately, we've also been able to jack a bit of free internet from the local cafe that shares our parking lot - woo woo! Now time for some sweet ZZZ's.

Here's hoping we get to take a quick dip in the AM before heading on to our next stop - Whanganui!

Jess' highlight of the day: enjoying the relaxing beach :)
Jon's highlight of the day: the Weta Cave