Weather bomb

4 years ago I was supposed to take a ferry to the Greek Isles from mainland Greece. However, high winds and rain postponed my trip and I wasn't able to make it to the islands. Had to spend a few extra days in Athens wandering aimlessly around the city and visiting such exciting museums as the museum of ethnic clothing. Luckily I am going to go there on this trip and have allowed myself many days to get there if inclement weather strikes again.

Flash forward to Saturday March 3 2012 and weather strikes again. I was supposed to take a ferry from Wellington over to the south island today and a weather bomb hits. High winds and rain have cancelled all ferries today. The chain reaction of events this started for me at 630am has been highly aggravating.

So as I sat in the hostel lobby, I asked if they had any rooms for tonight, since I will now be stuck in Wellington for another day. Of course they are fully booked, but I can check back later to see if people that were coming from the south island to the north cancelled due to the ferry situation.  And if they are still fully booked, I am sure that most of the other hostels are probably booked as well. It's a Saturday night. No bank lobbies or beaches here to find refuge for the night either. Hopefully, something will work itself out.

I then set off walking around the city to try and find an ATM to get some cash and blow off some steam. The one nice thing about Wellington is that every store has an overhang, so you can essentially walk around the entire city without being exposed to the elements, but for when crossing the street. It took forever to find an ATM and when I finally found one, wouldn't you know it, my ATM card didn't work. The card that was just sent to me by my parents, and worked just fine the other day, was refused by 3 separate ATM machines. And of course none of the banks have Saturday hours for me to discuss this issue with them. But at least the machines didn't keep my card this time like they did in Australia.

So I walked back to the hostel and purchased 24hrs of internet service so that I could change all of my bus/hostel reservations I had made for the next week. The one bad thing about being such a planner, is that when events like this happen, I get totally screwed. Making expensive phone calls with my international phone to bus companies and hostel owners is not how I wanted to be spending my morning. 

So now I sit in the hostel lounge writing on my blog, not knowing what the hell I am going to do today. I guess I could go buy another luggage lock since I lost one of them somewhere on my travels already. Or maybe I could go buy a new rain cover for my big bag since the one I bought at home is not big enough cover my bag. Or maybe I could shower for the first time in a week. Or maybe I could do laundry, although it would be cheaper for me to just stand outside in this weather bomb, rub some soap on my clothes and let the rain and driving wind clean me off. Oh, and that trip to Dunedin I was planning, is off the table. Getting a bus to get down there was damn near impossible and would have taken forever. So no steepest road in the world for Jeremy. Instead, my trip to the Franz Josef glacier has been delayed by a day.  Oh, and the business trip I took yesterday to 2 local lighthouses wasn't as I had hoped as they were painting the Castlepoint Lighthouse and the skies were blah all day long.  Still didn't stop me from taking hundreds of pics though, but good luck uploading any of them since it takes 4 minutes to upload 1 pic with these slow hostel internet connections.

So what else have I been up to. Some of you have wanted to hear about black water rafting. So we had to abseil/rappel down into the cave about 150ft. Kind of fun to propel myself off the cave walls and slide down a rope. So we get to the bottom of the cave and are given an inner tube to float along a river in the cave. No rapids or anything. You had to pull yourself through the water with the aid of a rope attached to the wall. So hanging from the ceiling of the cave are tiny critters called glowworms. Essentially they are maggots with glowing excrement, but that type of advertising wouldn't drum up much business, so they are called glowworms.  These maggots send off these long monofilament like strands to catch other insects to eat. They do this for quite some time before eventually turning into flies themselves. However, once they turn into flies, they lose the ability to eat. They only thing they can do is reproduce. So they mate with each other for about 36-48hrs and then die because they have no way of ingesting any food.  The rest of the trip was spent walking along the river in the cafe and then climbing up 3 small waterfalls to make our way above ground. A fun time.

Yesterday, I went to 2 lighthouses. Castlepoint and Cape Palliser. They are both situated on cliffs overlooking the turquoise waters of the Pacific Ocean. They are how I have always envisioned lighthouses. At Cape Palliser, I decided to make one last stop, before returning my car rental, to get one last view of the lighthouse. Glad I did. I wandered along the coastline and was hearing these strange bellows. Turned out to be dozens of harbor seals and their babies perched all along the rocks. Was kind of creepy climbing on these rocks and seeing a seal at every turn. Got back into town and actually found a brewpub with legit beers. Lots of interesting microbrews including a bunch from the states like Flying Dog and Dogfish. I had a bunch of tasty NZL microbrews. Nice to know they actually do make good beer over here and not just these 4-5% lagers/ales that all taste exactly the same.

Castlepoint...this pic took 5min to upload and I tried to upload more but the next one was 15min and counting so I canceled the upload. This is all you get unfortunately.

So here I sit. I am not a big city person. You would think being trapped in this urban environment on a Saturday night, with more cafes/restaurants per capita than New York City, would be a good thing. But I don't want to go to clubs. After I do some shopping, this would be the perfect day to catch up on my DVR at home or sit around and watch sports all day. I will probably go to the movies and pay way too much to watch a couple of recent flicks. Hopefully, I can find a bed because since it is Saturday, I was just told that every hostel in town is booked. Maybe a hotel would be nice today, so I could lay in bed with a TV and waste the day away. So many choices, and none that appealing. Hope you all are having a better day.