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Playing tourist again, I finished off the top

three floors of the gargantuan Te Papa museum today and then wandered to Cuba Street for lunch and shopping. For those of you keeping score (Paolo, this is you), Cuba Street Kebabs has the largest, though not the best tasting, kebab I’ve experienced yet on my trip. If you can’t tell, I’m a bit of a Kebab connoisseur if ever a thing did such exist. On a traveler’s budget, I found a few nice second hand clothing stores that they’ve tried to glamorize by referring to themselves as ‘Retro’ clothing boutiques. Serious, just admit that you are nothing more than a glorified rummage sale, you are not fooling anyone.

On the way back to the bus stop, I made the steep climb up to the botanical gardens. This being the fourth or fifth (maybe sixth) botanical gardens that I’ve been too in the last two months I was utterly unimpressed. I think I’ve now visited my fair share of such gardens and should be exempt from ever seeing another one in the future. I feel the same way about parades, costume parties and college graduations.

Parliament Building

Walking home from the Lower Hutt station, I ran into Lauren and Nikos cruising town in the van looking for a Christmas tree. Our original plan was to cut one down during our volunteer outings, but with eight people we never came across a tree that was good enough for everyone. The hour getting late, we finally broke down and agreed to pay for one. As luck would have it, we saw numerous road side vendors during the week, but now that we were actively looking for them none were to be found. After quite a bit of driving around we settled on a slightly crooked, long needle from a small lot at a gas station in Moera.

What I Learned Today: While searching the Hutt Valley for a Christmas tree today we made a few wrong turns and ended up in what would pass for the wrong side of the tracks. Run down houses, litter, and a biker-gang’s picnic all comfortably sitting the shadow of an Exxon-Mobil oil refinery/distribution center. Make no mistake, this was not Compton or Cabrini Green, but nor was it a place you’d really want to be at 2 am on a Saturday morning. I feel that in most of our travels we are constantly exposed to the best and most beautiful areas that a place has to offer and generally come away from the experience feeling that in some way where ever we visited (with the exclusion of third world countries) is vastly superior to our own country. Thus, peering into the underbelly of the Kiwi society has somehow made the feeling of being here all the more real. Of all the good things to come from my two volunteer sessions, it has been this, the chance to see things – good or bad – off of the regular tourist path.

written by

exumenius on December 15, 2007 from Wellington, New Zealand

from the travel blog: Kiwis and Kangaroos

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