Te Papa, The Tattoo Museum and the Cable Car

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


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Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Despite the cramoed dorm room that we were in (I half wished that I was camping in the back garden with Chris) I managed to get a good night sleep and woke up feeling quite refreshed and ready for my day in Wellington.  Windy Welly, as it is locally known, and it is certainly that.  We all decided to go to the museum together so it was going to be another social day.  Te Papa is enormous; six floors covering geography, history, pre and post European contact, science, natural biology and myriad other displays, as well as interactive school zones, a bush walk and a series of 'feel it' displays, such as a standing bungy jump and water ski.  These cost money, so, being stingy backpackers, we did not use them.  We spent a good three hours in the museum, looking at the geological section and discovering the fault line that will eventually halve the size of North Island, and there was even a lever game to play which demonstrated the way that the land would fold in this change.  With the number of trmors that have occured around the south island in the past month it is not hard to imagine it happening.  We also had the opportunity to try and lift core rocks, or their equivalent, in the earth section.  They were ridiculously heavy for their size, especially in compapison to surface rocks of the same volume.

It was a lovely facility, but to really see everything inside would have required about three or four visits over a few days, rather than the few hours that we spent exploring it.  Our time in Te Papa basically came to an end when we all got hungry and went to the closest bakery for lunch.  I really like New Zealand bakeries.  It is not like going into a bakery at home, where it is usually part of a chain and everything is the same everywhere.  Most here are individual stores with a slight variation on the standard choices and they have very good pastries.  We sat on the harbour front to eat lunch, which did not have the most pristine of views, as it looked out over the industrial ports but which had the entertaining distraction of seagulls fighting over crumbs that fell from our food.

After lunch I was museum bound again, this time to the National Tattoo museum, though it is fair to say that this was not quite what Iwas expecting.  It is a voluntary operation and not state run as I had expected, and as a consequence of that, it was small, and tucked out of the way on a side street.  The set up was comprised of small folder displays and poster racks rather than printed displays.  Despite these problems, which were more to do with a lack of funding than enthusiam and knowledge, it was still a really interesting place and I spent a pleasant half hour or so sifting through the articles and theses that had collected or donated to the museum, and also talking to the museum staff (who are also volunteers).  I wished that I had more time to go trough some of the information that was available, but I had agreed to go and meet the others for a trip up in th cable car and a walk through the Botanic Gardens, so I had to get on.

We headed to the cable car and got a little bit lost in the centre, although we did find it in the  end.  Only to find that it was closed.  Not because we were late thankfully (we were that as well), but because the cable car was being repaired and upgraded and so was just closed in general.  After a general discussion we decided that we did not feel like walking up the hill, so we went back into town and lookd around instead, I bought some iodine tablets as a precaution for when I go to the outer islands of Fiji.

Tomorrow we all head off - Chris to South Island, Helen and me to Tongariro, I have a date with the volcano, so I hope the weather holds for the next few days and that the ground stays silent and unmoving.
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