(September 17- September 20)
Jillian and I left our dear friends of New Plymouth in the morning (on time for once!) and were in Wellington by the afternoon. We met our new friend, John Walshe, who took us to his cousin’s house to stay for free! What great luck. We all went into Wellington to get a couple drinks downtown on the waterfront before the South Africa game. What a beautiful day! Wellington’s waterfront is really amazing. Very pristine, a lot of public art, and exciting. A bit high so, but what waterfront isn't? We met Keiran and Karen (Moira’s brother and his wife) at a bar before we headed to the game. On the way to the game, John announced he only had two tickets to the corporate box seats (or the VIP seats from the top of the stadium), the other 4 were for just behind the media. So he gave the corporate box seats to us! I think the media seats were actually better because they were right behind the team, but we got to sit way up with the fancy people with our own section that we shared with a rugby union from South Africa, private bathrooms and everything! The people we were sitting with must have known one of the players, Bismark, because when he came on they erupted and were calling “Go Bismark!!” the whole time. So cool! Of course South Africa won. Fiji didn’t stand a chance against the Springboks. After the match, we headed to a fancy little bar on the waterfront to watch Ireland beat Australia. What an upset! And well deserved. I don’t like Australia. Sorry Wallabies, but your winger looks like Justin Beiber.
Kieran and Karen left for their hotel, and I thought John was going to take us back to his cousin’s house. He nonchalantly said, we’re meeting up with some players from South Africa for coffee. It’ll be quick because they need to be on the road. !!! So he took us to the hotel where the team was staying, and we’re waiting in the lobby and can see the team just hanging out on the mezzanine above us. Yonnie DuPlussy came down for a quick hello while we waited for Bismark (!!!!!) So Bismark came down and we all sat in the lobby while he waved people off asking for autographs, saying he was in a meeting with us. We ordered hot chocolates and Bismark and John caught up on each other’s lives. Normal. Bismark is a giant. He plays hooker (yes, that is a position in rugby) and his arms are about three or four times the size of mine. He was really shy, and didn’t address anyone but John. He gulped down his hot chocolate in three swigs, before Jillian had even taken a real sip from hers, and we just kind of watched in amazement, too shocked really to say anything. At all. He went on to talk about how he is only allowed to bring three bags with him, and it was so hard for him to pack because his shoes are too big! One shoe takes up half the bag! And that is really what this international rugby player from the South African team chose to talk about. And that he calls his mother every day.
We let Bismark get back to packing his large shoes, and headed to John’s cousin’s house for the night. John’s cousin’s husband actually coaches the Tongan team. I think that’s how he has all these great connections, and can get us corporate box tickets to Bismark’s section. John’s cousin’s house is a beautiful country home just outside of Wellington with horses, a little lamb, and a pool! They made us a Kiwi breakfast in the morning, which is, get this: baked beans and spaghettios over toast?! We opted for just the poached eggs and toast. Spaghettios for breakfast is just too weird.
John’s cousin was so nice to let us spend another night in her home, which allowed us to have a day to see Wellington before heading to the South Island. We did the only free thing I have seen so far in New Zealand, which was the Te Papa museum, New Zealand’s national museum! It was an insanely huge museum, and really really interesting. It touches on the Maori’s shady history of being screwed over by the Brits, but its funded by the government, so some parts are kind of covered, or euphemized. There are definitely pieces missing in their history. Also, did you know that New Zealand has only two native mammals? There are two species of bats that are native (there used to be three, but one went extinct), but of course now they have tons of mammals that have been imported for farming, for sport, and then more brought in to control the species that were previously introduced. Since New Zealand has no native predators, mammals like rodents and rabbits went wild and then had to be controlled by new invasive species. And many of New Zealand’s native species have gone extinct with the introduction of more robust invasive species. ‘Tis evolution, with some help from colonization.
For the remainder of the afternoon, we explored downtown Wellington by bar and restaurant hopping to see the three games that night. We watched my boyfriend on Wales (Mike Philips) beat Samoa, and France be mean to Canada (you know, reading this over I am such a girl when I chose which rugby team to support. I love Wales because their half back is cute and has good control at the ruks, and I don’t like Samoa because their foulback looks mean. At least I like Canada because they’re close to the US. And the blond twins on the team are freakishly good. And I just don’t like the French, no offense Rue’s). Between games and sometimes at half time, we picked a different place to watch the games. For half of England v Georgia, we found an outdoor screen on the waterfront and had hot chocolate. That was really cool, and should be replicated in every city. Outdoor venues are the best.
After a full afternoon of rugby, we headed back to John’s cousin’s house to prepare for our trip to the South Island very early in the morning. Well, you may have guessed by now that by this point in me and Jillain’s adventures, we don’t do things very punctually. We were supposed to get to the ferry by 7:00 to check our car in, and the ferry would leave at 8. Well, instead of waking up at 5:30, we didn’t wake up until 6:35, and the ferry is half an hour away. We threw our things together, cursing ourselves for oversleeping, we open the living room door, and there is the baby lamb sitting at our door inside the house baa-ing. No time to address that, we just ran to the car. So apologies to John Walshe’s cousin, I swear we didn’t let the lamb into the house. It was there when we woke up.
We got to the ferry at 7:20, sure they would reject us, but they just waved us right in! A freakin miracle. So we had a three hour ferry to the South Island through the gorgeous Marlboro sounds, then drove right into Nelson. And by some random chance, we arrived the day before Nelson’s first rugby game of the world cup, Italy v. Russia (true rugby fans we are, this is the second time we arrived in a city hosting a world cup match without knowing it). In celebration of their first world cup game, they were having an art fair in front of Christ Church. We walked around the fair, which had a few people in costume pretending to be Kiwis in the 1800’s, trying to shine our shoes. The whole thing, we found out later, is Nelson’s way of bragging that they were the birth of rugby in New Zealand. So tomorrow, in celebration of their kick-off game, they are having a re-enactment of the very first NZ rugby game of Nelson rugby club vs. Nelson College rugby team. We explored the rest of the town, and hiked to the “Centre of New Zealand” which is just a 20 minute hike up a little mountain. When we got to the top, there is a great view of Nelson and of the Tasman Sea. Not as good as the view from New Plymouth’s little mountain, but it is the centre of New Zealand, and there was a double rainbow. We may not have seen any kiwi birds yet this trip, but we’ve seen plenty of rainbows.
We were lucky again to have a place to stay that night at Moira’s cousin’s house just outside of Nelson. So we drove over for dinner with Moray and John, and had the best meal we’ve had, probably since getting to New Zealand. It was just chicken and wild rice with vegetables, but we’d been eating so poorly, so that meal made miles of a difference for us. After dinner we had some tea with Moray and John and told them about our travels so far, and how we liked New Zealand. We decided to stay an extra day in Nelson for the reenactment game. They opened by having the Nelson secondary school do the Haka on the stairs of Christ Church. I imagined there would be like 6 or 7 kids doing the Haka, but I was way wrong. It was more like over a hundred kids flooding the stairs. Really really cool. Then we walked over to see the rugby game. The teams all dressed up in late 1800’s school uniforms, and used a leather rugby ball. They played with the old school rules, where there isn’t really tackling or rucking, but rather frequent rolling mauls, passing is considered cowardice, and trys don’t award points, only conversion kicks do. Games often went on three to five days until a team scored two goals. They even had a pretend streaker, outfitted in a flesh-colored body suit. We didn’t stay to the end, giving up after an hour and a half, so who knows how long the game actually went on. We walked downtown to the Founder’s Brewery to do a beer tasting (don’t recommend it, for being the oldest brewery in New Zealand, they really haven’t gotten a good recipe down yet) before setting in for the match that night. They still had cheap tickets left for the game, so we got two tickets and looked for a place to stay the night. Well, conveniently the hostel directly across the street from the stadium had two beds left, so we booked them before getting dinner. We got a couple margaritas, and met a couple obnoxious Americans. They bought us a round of margaritas, and were surprised when we didn’t want to drink with them. When we told them where we were from, the one guy said, “oh you’re from Philly? Fuck you! No wonder you didn’t want to drink with us! It’s cause you’re from Philly”. Hands down, best response I’ve ever gotten about being from Philly.
The backpackers hostel was quite cute. It was the first place we’ve stayed in where no one had any interest in rugby. They all were going to the match, and uniformly decided to root for Italy. Funny how the hostel closest to the stadiums had only two people interested in rugby staying there, and that was Jillian and myself. Kick off was at 7:30, and we had the luxury of waiting until 7:25 to walk over. We walked into stadium and our seats were basically right in front of us, and we sat down just in time for kick off. It was a terrible match. If you ever get the chance, check out Italy’s jerseys. The front has this weird design that gives it a saran wrap effect…basically it’s shiny. I don’t know how they get away with wearing those hideous jerseys, but Italy won, which makes things look bleak for USA when they play Italy in Nelson in exactly one week.
After the match, all the people staying in the hostel came back with hardly anything to say about the rugby except that it was the coldest night they’ve had in a while. In their defense, that was a terrible introduction to the game of rugby, and the most bored fans we’ve ever seen. They managed to get the Mexican wave to go around the stadium eight times, and it wasn’t because they were excited over Italy’s try.
Leaving Nelson in the morning, we had exactly one week to see the entire South Island before returning to Nelson on Tuesday to see USA’s last match against Italy. So here goes!
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