Helen, Chris and Mt Victoria

Trip Start Mar 10, 2007
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Trip End Jan 08, 2008


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Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The ferry crossing was quite fine, I spent most of it sitting on the sundeck, though that did cause some problems with my hair, which became massively tangled very quickly in the wind, but it was good to sit in the sun and enjoy the bright clear day.  After collecting my baggage at the Wellington end I bumped into a girl who had been on the intercity bus from Nelson with me and we got to chatting and ended up staying at the same place as neither of us had remembered to book ahead.  Luckily, that is not a problem at this time of year, though had it been next month we probably would have been caught out, but as the weather would have been much better that may not have been so bad.  Better not let that happen though and get out of the stupor that having my bed booked for me has created...

Still, we got beds in a quiet, if run down place just out of the city centre, which is a million times better than getting stuck in a Base hostel, which is, in a nutshell, Club 18/30 for backpackers.  Horrid.  This was Helen - my companion, not the hostel - and she was lovely.  She was also one of the few English people I have met travelling who is from the north.

Although it was late afternoon, the day was gorgeous and I decided to go up to Mt Victoria to try and do some LOTR scene-taking and get a view over the city.  Helen decided to come with me as it was an easy walk from the hostel and a doable axcursion in the daylight that was left, so we set off.  Wandering down the steps of the hostel we managed to get utterly in the way of a Canadian guy who was attempting to go into town to eat real food for a change.  This was Chris.  Obviously we apologised for getting in the way and managed to do so even more at the same time (unintentionally) due to unweildy backpacks making us both twice our usual girth.  This meant that by the time we had gotten to the bottom of the steps and made room for him to get through, we were all introduced by name (unusual) and also knew what everyone was planning.  As he hadn't yet been up Mt Victoria, and had an apple to stave off hunger, Chris decided to come up Mt Victoria with us too.

Therefore the three of us set off in the general direction of the hill, though we were not entirely sure of the route.  At the bottom of the hill I tried to figure out which of the four paths that confronted us would lead to Frodo's road (Nazgul encounter), without much success.  I did ask a local, but he told me to 'get over it' as LOTR was at least five years ago.  I think that was his way of getting around the fact that he did not know which way to go.

After an indescisive moment, we just took the path of least resistance - that is, the path that was gentlest in gradient, and this came out of the trees about half way up the slope in a green meadow that overlooked the CBD, and which had a rope swing sitting over a steep incline at the back of the meadow.  I had to have a go.  It was quite daunting to swing out over the incline, as it was very steep and hard, but it felt great once I did it - albeit out of control - but I did graze my ankle on an exposed tree root. 

After playing on the rope swing for a while we continued up the hill, not noticing any particular Frodoish scenes and reached the top fairly quickly to find a car park and a bus stop waiting to greet us.  This is typical, but the city looke great from the lookout and the walk had been pleasant enough so the fact that we could have gooten the bus up was not disheartening - besides, if we had, we would not have got to play on the swing.

We did not stay up the hill for long, as we were all getting hungry and we decided to just eat out rather than cook for ourselves.  We found a little Indian restauraunt in the city and shared three curries between us.  It was a very social afternoon and evening and a good welcome to Wellington.
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