April 3rd 2007 at 06:00 UTC – Wellington is a small city. Its harbour can handle only three ships at a time and it has maybe a dozen glass buildings with more than 15 floors. Yet this is the city that governs New Zealand. That, more than anything, gives you an idea of how few people New Zealand has.
We went to the Te Papa Museum. It was good but we did not see much of it. They have a giant squid they caught a few weeks ago, but they are still studying it and do not know if and when it will be shown to the public.
We saw a Maori long boat and meeting house – each full of wild faces cut into the dark brown wood.
We met our friend Judy Baxter at the Te Papa. She showed the city and told us stories about it. Like one time a ship overturned in the harbour: hundreds died and bodies washed up into the city.
She also told us about the time the Americans came in 1942 to fight the Japanese (she remembers!). They were tall and had money and were taking all the pretty girls away from the New Zealand boys. That led to fights, of course. But both went off to fight the Japanese and many died on far-off islands whose names are cut in stone by the harbour.
We went to the top of the city in a cable car, just like the one in Hong Kong. The two cities even look somewhat alike: tall glass buildings by the harbour with rough blue mountains behind them.
But not all the mountains are blue. When we flew in we saw the dry, brown mountains to the west. They go straight down into the sea. New Zealand has had little rain in the past year or so
The cable car goes to the top of the Botanic Gardens. We walked down through it back into the city streets. The plants and trees are like those in America but everything looks a bit different. The branches are not so straight and most trees do not lose their leaves for the winter. Winter rarely gets worse than what New Yorkers would call a cold, early spring.
One tree comes out with red flowers on Christmas Day, which down here is at the beginning of summer.
Judy was going to take us to see the parliament building – it looks like a beehive – but Rebecca’s feet gave out. She wore shoes that were beautiful rather than sensible.
In New York you can hold up your hand and a taxi will stop. Here you have to call them on the telephone! The places to eat, too, are only open during certain hours.
The people downtown dress like they live in a much larger city. They have much more refinement and polish than people from an American city the same size.
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