The (Other) Windy City

Last you left me, I had just finished riding around the East Cape. I was in Gisborne, which is supposed to have some nice parts, but which, in my (brief) experience, was rather blah. Two days of high wind and rain were forecast, so, as my route down to Wellington from there was supposed to be a) busy with traffic b) not spectacular and c) expensive, I hopped on a bus and fast-forwarded down to Wellington, capital of this nation.

As you may or may not know, Alex, my younger brother, has been living and working in Wellington for a bit over a year now. I dropped in on him, to spend a little down time and hang out. It was good to see the dude, and Wellington is a lovely little city. (As Lonely Planet puts it, it "punches well above its weight".)

We didn't truly take in all the sights, as neither of us was/is particularly flush with monies, but we still poked around for a week, seeing what the city had to offer. Variously, the Te Papa museum was good, though a very touristy museum, the zoo was small but charming (Red pandas are still the best), the Deerhoof concert was great, The Fantastic Mr. Fox is fantastic, there are a ton of lovely restaurants around the city, and I'm quite enamored of the affogato, a scoop of gelato with a shot of espresso in it.

I should point out here, as I haven't yet, that this whole country seems to drink instant coffee at home and a lot of espresso anywhere else. I have yet to even see drip coffee offered anywhere. The instant coffee part is a mystery to me, but the espresso on demand is a wonderful thing to have around.

In any event, Wellington's hillsides and culture was lovely, and made me jealous of Alex's year there. I don't know that I'll be moving, but it's certainly a place well worth spending the time.

As for me, I'm now on a break. As I've covered a good bit of the North Island and Alex won't be available for the two of us to tour the South Island for a couple weeks, I'm WWOOFing (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) at a yoga retreat center a bit North of Wellington for a bit. I work around four hours a day, gardening in the organic garden and doing whatever, in exchange for free room and board and all the yoga and tai chi I decide to do. This will be lovely and relaxing, and also very cheap, which is nice because New Zealand, for all its charms, is more expensive than Mexico would have been. I'll post about the Centre soonish, but things will probably be pretty quiet beyond that for a couple weeks, as momentous things will likely not really be happening.