'happy girl COME SWIM'

welly welly wellington. i feel as though i've aged five years in the past four days, so many faces so many stories. my flatmate sam and i flew up to the north island this weekend for the Beirut show at a little venue that was spooky similar to the black cat, down to the extreme air-conditioning and coat room. more on that later, the show was amazing but as i'm experiencing more and more frequently here it seems as though the destination is never really what makes the weekend. the hostile we stayed at the first night provided a host of colorful characters to welcome us into this beautiful city. i bunked next to a beautician from liverpool and above an older chinese woman who talked to herself in the night and left us caramels just like your chinese grandmother is supposed to. she smelled like tobacco and peppermint! haa.. the next morning sam and i took a ferry out to Day's Bay, a little island off the coast of wellies. there we hopped on a bus until the driver wouldn't go no mo and jumped onto a rather inconspicuous hiking trail behind the bus depot. we climbed for most of the day winding amongst tropical switchbacks and loony amounts of silverfern, which seems to be the logo for all things nz born and therefor all things rubgy,beer and souvenir. summit was at the golden hour, and the light played sweetly off of the cutest little owl i've ever seen whos eyes followed mine and stayed as long as we did. dinner was kiwi juice down palm and wrists with feet dangling into a valley where dinosaurs live. that night was drinks with hostile kids, very diverse and outgoing group because at least we have the packs on our backs in common. met up with a group of gambleshark irishmen here on a worker's visa for a year and 'living the dream' they wanted to talk about Burning Man and st. patty's plans and claimed their home version of paper scissors rock was foot cockroach atomic bomb. day two was the zoo, cute but pretty unimpressive because zoos are depressing unless life of pi is true. unimpressive save the kiwitalk at 1:15. here, the zookeeper (american, i'll have you know so it can be done!) brought out a one-legged kiwi saved from a possum trap years before. it hopped around and even had a prosthetic leg, which was molded carefully by Weta Workshop (ring any bells?) fit especially for it's little stump. kiwi solidarity at it's finest.so it is the evening of this night that i was able to embark on a hike through wellington's nature sanctuary after sundown. thus far, the most important and fantastical portion of my trip i think. this is getting on, so i won't go as far into it as i'd like...but this hike did a tidy job of reaffirming my choice in career direction, a welcome relief to any undergrad to be sure. tucked into a rolling jurassic nook between two mountains, one by one each nocturnal species would reveal itself to us through it's own specific call. we were confronted by some parrots (kaka) and a couple of mockingbird-like tui birds on our treck, the birds of this region quite brash because it has no reason to fear humans due to extremely strict protection laws...birds, stoats and all other mammals are another matter entirely. as evening settled in i caught my first look at the southern cross and an upside-down orion as the call of the ru ru, a tiny little pigwidgeon-like owl floated out of the hills. ten mintues later, we were delighted with the "weep weep" of a female kiwi bird. the air was quite electric, and as we proceeded down the path we were slowly surrounded by tiny little light prick constellations of glow worms, and a short time later a male kiwi stomping and snorting in the trail in front of us.

the last day was a trip up mt. victoria, which availed to me a 360 degree view of this fair city and a number of lord of the rings filming locations. you can imagine the hilarity that ensued the hours after i found a 6 year old cracked sign in the mud with an arrow pointing to the general direction of these fabled glens. thank god for self-timers and relatively vacant trails, or things would have gotten awkward quick explaining to the locals exactly why i was looking for a specific root with a maniacal grin and a hint of desperation between the brow. so yes, blackriders take flight. the performance that night was amazing, the my fellow general admissions were actually waltzing along with this fantastic horn/uke get-up on stage and the band played well into the night and finished with a serenade of hallelujah. i melted, life is lovely and to the four of you reading this i miss you dearly madly.