I got back yesterday from my third coastal voyage as a watch leader on the square rigger I work on sporadically. A few photos are linked below.

I joined the ship in Wellington, our great capital, which consists of a couple of blocks of tallish buildings plus Parliament on a small bit of flat land, and all the other buildings hanging on by their fingernails to vertical surfaces all around. I had most of the day free to look around the city before we left. I went to the new museum, which was too modern and glittery for my taste in museums, but interesting to see. I also found the actual cave troll from "Lord of the Rings" and took a photo of it. It's even bigger than it looked in the film.

I wanted to get a view of the city from Mount Victoria, but by the time I thought of this, I had missed the last bus there. It looked like it would take hours and hours to walk there, but fortunately I *had* hours and hours. So I walked in its general direction and then took all the roads pointing up (and in Wellington, pointing up *means* pointing up) until I found one of the walking tracks to the summit.

Several scenes from LOTR were filmed around these tracks. I'm *certain* I found the place where the hobbits first saw the Black Rider (the "GET OFF THE ROAD!" leaves-blowing-around scene.)

By the time I finally got to the summit, I was short of time, so I ran most of the way back down. It was fun on the steep tracks, but by the time I got back to the city I was covered in dirt and sweat and tree scratches and looked pretty disgusting. I made it back to the ship in time to clean up and change clothes mere minutes before the voyage officially began. I think I had been walking and/or running for five and a half hours since arriving in Wellington, having eaten nothing since that time except a $1 terrifyingly bright green lime slushy from a gas station, so I completely wiped myself out before the voyage even started. Great fun.

We went across Cook Strait and sailed around the Marlborough Sounds (at the top of the South Island) for the next few days. Then we went out again and down the coast to Fort Underwood for another day or two until the weather moderated enough for us to make the coastal passage to Gisborne. This was two days and a night of sailing, which we did in shifts, as there is no shelter along this coast.

Some highlights of the trip:

1) Seals! Seals are cool. They lie around on the surface rolling around and waving their flippers at you. Plus, they're cute.

2) I saw a royal albatross during the passage to Gisborne. I don't know much about birds, but it couldn't have been anything else. There's no way something that big should even be able to fly. It was *amazing*. It looked like it was the size of a Cessna. They breed in the South Island at Taiaroa Heads and are fairly common along this part of the coast, but I had never seen one before. It was resting on the water; I wished it would fly so I could see its wingspan, but it was too far away to be frightened into flight by the boat.

3) In the Marlborough Sounds, the williwaws were something special. These are water whirlwinds caused by sudden blasts of wind rocketing down from the steep hills. I even, incredibly, got a good photo of one. During the week of our trip, wind gusts of 117 km/hr were recorded at The Brothers, some small rocky islands in the vicinity of where we were sailing; for us it was mostly calm, because we could move around to avoid the worst of the weather, but it was a real experience to be at anchor and feel the whole ship react as one of these incredible, howling things went over us. The williwaw would only take a couple of seconds, but while it lasted it was hard to even stay on your feet. One second later, it would be perfectly calm again. Nature is so endlessly fascinating.

4) While sailing up to Gisborne, I got to see Cape Palliser from the sea for the first time. Wow. Just wow. There is a line in our national anthem which goes "May our mountains ever be / Freedom's ramparts on the sea." I never really understood what that line meant before. I didn't take a photo -- it couldn't possibly have conveyed the impact which comes from that first sight of vast, stark mountains rising straight up to the sky from the Pacific. Any photo I could show you of it would just get accused of being computer generated. Wow.

5) A terrific display by a Hector's dolphin along the South Island coast. It was leaping right out of the water and turning somersaults. Nobody else on the boat saw it, and accused me of making it up.

6) Also, I think I might have achieved the ultimate antithesis of tree-hugging hippie environmentalism: I threw up on a dolphin. Somebody give me an award.

7) I gained ten more days of sea time towards my license, one new scar, about four hundred new bruises (I find more every day), the knowledge of what it's like to be continually seasick for two days and a night and still be required to work, and a lot more. The stars out at sea are incredible on a night sailing when you're almost alone on deck and there are dolphins all around and a crescent moon in the sky. Things like that make up for a lot.

When we arrived in Gisborne, I then had an eight hour bus trip back to Auckland. I slept through most of it, since I had been on night watch the previous night and only had about three hours' sleep, but fortunately I was awake when we went through the Waioeka (I think) Gorge. I had never heard of this area before but now I will have to go back some day and hike around there and see it properly. It was another one of those huge, impressive, dramatic places that look like something from another world.

By the time the bus arrived in Auckland I felt like somebody had been hitting me with sticks for two weeks, so it wasn't all that much fun hauling my bag miles across town to another bus to get home on. By the time I actually got home I probably looked and smelled like a drugged vagrant, I hadn't washed my hair or had a shower in ten days, and every item of clothing I had was filthy and/or damp. Getting clean again was PARADISE. I slept most of today, and tomorrow I go back to my regular job.

Brunnen-"the cat seemed happy to see me again"G