Big City!

I've hit the North Island. Oh yes. And suddenly there's all these people and tall buildings and buzzes and hums and beeps and honks and wooooo, what a difference it feels like from the South Island where cities are really towns, towns really just villages with a few extra shops and a garage, and villages... well.

So I'm staying in Wellington at the moment, which is a cool city. It has a population of under 200,000 but feels very busy compared to what I'm used to. I've been soaking up the culture at the brilliant Te Papa museum, which is just huge (not quite Tate Modern size, but you could spend a good day in there wondering and wandering round all the exhibits) and some cool cinemas. I caught the end of a Latin American film festival last night where I saw a film called Paper Dove, about the Marxist/Maoist uprisings in Peru in the 80s. It followed the life of a young boy who was kidnapped by the "New Peru" group and then given militia type training. You follow him as he makes friendships, confronts enemies, and makes the most amazingly difficult decisions for a child his age. It was all quite shocking and gut wrenching and made all the more so by the stunning backdrop of Peruvian Glaciers and mountain ranges. Definitely worth watching.


Wellington is also a city of trees. Now that Autumn is coming along it is the perfect time to be here. There are parks just everywhere, from highly manicured Botanic Gardens with beautiful rose gardens... This is a Claude Monet -


...to native wildlife parks that stretch up onto the hillside, covering acres upon acres of land. Walking into these native bush areas makes it incredibly hard to imagine that you are just a mile or two away from the centre of the capital city. Yesterday I did the Hilltop walk, which takes you along the skyline of the mountains that encircle the city and harbour, and eventually take you down into the city at the south end. Unfortunately it was a wee bit cloudy yesterday, but apparently on a good day you can see right across to Marlborough and Kaikoura on the South Island, and up to Taranaki on the North Island. Here's to imagination. It was a pretty neat view down into the city though -


While in Wellington I've been working for Dave who is Ecoseeds, an organic seed supplier to all round New Zealand. He's one of those very practical handy guys that can turn just about anything into anything. Think crazy inventor dude from Back to the Future living Scrap heap challenge as his everyday life. I helped him rig up a sprinkler system for his polytunnel the other day out of pretty much nothing, which was cool. Mainly my work is packing seeds, which is fairly repetitive, but has lead me to wonder at the amazingness of seeds, and also makes me think that, when I have my city farm I might sell seeds from it as a wee extra little thing.

Off up to Taranaki next... Please be warmer there!