Wellington, New Zealand

June 03, 2019

Today the ship docked in Wellington, New Zealand. We got off the boat onto a shuttle that was headed for two stops. We got off at the first stop and asked around about bike rentals. There was a bike park on the map as well but we were told that it was just a few trails. We walked to a bike rental place and rented two mountain bikes. They were nice. We rode them around town through the market area and then headed further past the port town. We stayed by the roadside and occasionally checked a map to see where we were. We rode and rode and rode. Finally, we came up to the base a large hill/small mountain. We worked our way all the way up to the top. When we got to the top we stopped and checked the map again. We realized we weren’t really at the top so we rerouted and continued. Then we arrived at a large parking lot where we saw a sign that said pump track. There was a pump track just around the corner which we had fun at for a while.

Us atop the hill.

Then we sped down the mountain, got lost, sped down a bit more, dragged our bikes across a nude beach (which was totally disgusting), stopped for lunch, and went to a store called pack’n’save (the equivalent of Walmart) where my mom got some NZ wine.

Me having lunch.

After that we dropped off the bikes and walked around in town for a while. We bumped into our friend GG and chatted for a bit. We walked through the city and took lots of pictures. I also saw my dream motorcycle going down the street.
We happened to walk to a free museum which was very cool. It was a massive museum which was full of New Zealand stuff, but it was closing in 45 minutes by the time we got there. We decided to pick a section called The Scale of Our War which talked about the New Zealand/Mauri’s part in World War One.

The outline of me standing in front of a huge Me inside of a plastic life-sized whale's sculpture in the museum. heart.

After that we strolled further into the city where there were many open air bars. We were headed in the direction of the ship when we ran into another one of our friends, Luisa. She told us that there was going to be a special church service down the road and she was going to go for a few minutes before she went to a show. We decided to join her. Before the service started a lady gave us bulletins and invited us to stay for a light meal afterwards. The entire service was in Tongan and we later found out that it was for world day of prayer. It was led by women of 5 different churches. The churches were gathered together for this special service. It was very neat. There was a reverend who gave the sermon which we couldn’t understand. Later we found out that all the people were immigrants from Tonga. We stayed for the whole service so at the end of the service we went for this light meal that we had been invited to. There were three whole pigs, a huge pile of muscles, a stack of containers of ceviche, chicken wings with a mushroom sauce, Chinese food, and lots of other great food. Then we got back to the ship.