At the start of last week I was lucky enough to be offered to go kayaking with my Wellington friend Jono. I know him from over 10 years ago when I spent a winter in Canada. So yet again, I went out to play while the boss was busting a gut.
The van was pretty jammed with the kayaks in the back (that’s become a very often used phrase!), but we never had to go far. We put the kayaks out in Evans Bay marina which is literally around 500m from where we stay which is great.
We stayed in the water for around 2.5hrs which was long enough for us to paddle all the way round to the city centre, or as near as, at Oriental Bay and pull up at the beach there. At ‘O-Bay’ there’s a water fountain in the sea so Jono went up for a shower while I stayed away with the camera wrapped in dry bags. Behind the fountain (above my head) is the main working and shopping area of Wellington. It’s a great centre as that day there were people training for triathlons swimming in the sea, others sunbathing, fishing, and there was a yacht pulled up playing tunes while the skipper made some lunch. It was a glorious day and we were a bit pissed that we never took any cash with us – the ice creams at the shop across the road were calling us big style. I’m glad our trip wasn’t longer – we probably covered about 11km, and Jono went climbing afterwards. My arms were hurting until a couple of days later so I was glad I passed on that one.
Jono is talking about getting rid of his kayaks so it’s probably a good idea we’re leaving the city in a few weeks or I’d be trying to talk the breadwinner into more budget blowing purchases! Hopefully we’ll get Ciara out on them before we head away.
It’s reasons like this that the both of us seem to be pinching ourselves more and more when it’s a nice day as it really does rock here, and its making up for the terrible wintery weather. There’s been a few times over the last few weeks that we’ve just turned whilst walking around and saying ‘we live here!’ with big grins our faces. Over the last few weeks we’ve been more than happy to stick around the city at weekends as there’s so much going on, and we’ll still have a long list of things to do if and when we come back to Wellington, which we hope we do. For obvious reasons that some of you reading this will know, despite all this it has hit us very hard recently about just how far we are from home, how difficult it makes things sometimes, and how you can’t quickly and easily go home (and cheaply! last minute airfares from this direction were twice the UK price!). so we’re thinking of you all back in Ireland.
There is one benefit of being so far away though…. I’d swear here, but blooming ‘eck I’ve never bought anything for Christmas as early as this before!!! Despite the last recommended international post for NZ being this weekend (21st) I’m sure there will be some very early xmas cards being delivered!
The full van :
