okay things in this mission from my boss ms. rhonwyn have gotten way too intense today!
whiro the maori god of darkness managed to track me down in picton and prevented me from taking the maori flax artifacts to the museum's like i was supposed to. now i'm worried that was where i was supposed to deliver these containers of the maori people mystic knowledge and power. how and why i got out of that situation still alive is a little beyond me...
now i was on a ferry destined for the north island. a whole new half of new zealand i'd never seen or experienced before...
first we had to get across cook's strait.this is a fairly turbulent and chaotic channel. strong winds, especially from the south cause it to be quite "fun" for boats on the water. in most places it is over a km deep, and the current that runs between the two islands of new zealand can be very intense as well.
today it was looking like fairly calm sailing.
despite my worry and depression at not making it to my objectives in picton i was calmed by this pure view of the ocean. i do love the ocean...
helping calm me further was the abundance of sea birds that were flying or fishing around the boat as we sailed.
i saw all sorts of albatross, gannet, petrels, felmars, and mollyhawks on route. they were pretty exciting, but sadly never got close enough for good pictures.
after a long time on the open channel (i lost track of time due to depression) we finally arrived on the other side.
almost as though the north island knew how i felt, suddenly a rainbow descended from the ucky overcast weather as though to tell me to cheer up.
as we entered wellington harbour we passed the famous barrett reef. as i'd learn later in my explorations of wellington this reef was the cause of new zealand's worst maritime disasters... but i'll get to that later.
the sun peeled back at the clouds that shrouded the harbour, and as the majestic shafts of light beamed in onto the outskirts of wellington i had a slight shift in my head.
okay so i couldn't fix or change the picton debacle, but maybe they weren't the key...
after all, apart from the whales in kaikoura, the baskets hadn't reacted with or done anything the whole trip.
the key to getting rid of them might lie here on the north island. after all the maori traditionally stuck to the northern half of the country apart from intrepid or weak tribes who ventured to the colder harsher south island.
though picton had nearly the highest number of stops in one place for the south island, wellington had MORE along. in fact looking at my list of stops on the north island there were more here than on the south island!
as we pulled in closer to wellington i saw a sight i hadn't seen since canada... a city!
don't get me wrong, dunedin is nice and all, but frankly it's just a large town. its not much bigger than drumheller. there's only a handful of "skyscrapers", and certainly no urban looking downtown.
wellington on the other hand...
i realized i was going to like this place pretty quickly!
as the ferry docked i set about changing my attitude from doom and gloom back to exploration and excitement.
at the same time i needed to remember that danger wouldn't be far behind on this quest...
to be continued...
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