10 Days to go!!!

Wow, so I’m almost down to single digits of days before I leave! In fact I’ve actually only got another 6 days in Wellington- less than a week! I’m heading to the wedding of my friends Chris and Kelly in Napier- on the East Coast of the North Island from Thursday to Sunday. It should be a good break from the trip planning and prep! 

Last week I was lucky enough to catch up with Emma and Justin from Rolling Tales (definitely check out their website!). I started following them a while ago when they were spending the winter in Istanbul. They’ve just finished their two-year trip riding back from Europe and they’re now living in Wellington. It was great for me to finally meet this couple whose blog I’d been following for so long, and who I’d gotten quite a bit of my inspiration from. I learnt some good tips about a lot of touring stuff, but at the same time I walked away feeling that while I don’t know everything, that’s the point of travel, and that I think I’m pretty well prepared to at least give it a go.

Last Saturday I had my main leaving party. We went to the Fork & Brewer pub in central Wellington- I got there at 2pm. I think it worked really well- we stayed there until about 8pm (when we went for a curry and more beer), which meant people could come and go as they wanted to or as previous commitments would allow. I was really pleased with the turnout, and want to thank everyone for coming along and wishing me good luck for my adventure. One tip with this approach- find a good low-ish % beer and stick to it- I was drinking Emerson’s Bookbinder (a great Dunedin beer) and it worked perfectly, meaning I could have (relatively) coherent conversations even after being at a bar for 6 hours!

Also in the weekend I went to a Wellington Phoenix home game. They’re Wellington’s local football (soccer) team who play in the Australian league. They won the game against the Gold Coast United 2-0, and I really enjoyed going along- I wish I’d gone to more in my time in Wellington. I then came home to a great sunday roast with my flatmates.

Here are some photos from the football (and a couple of other ones I took yesterday).

I should be finished work by now.. But as always with these things, something’s come up. The delivery of a satellite image of Antarctica that I’ve been managing the purchase of has been delayed a couple of days, and I want to see if before I go. So I’m doing another day’s worth of work this week. It’s not too bad- it’s another day’s pay and I’m pretty happy with the preparation, so it means one less day of sitting around waiting to fly out! It’s also given me some more time to sort out some of the work I’m hoping to do while I’m away for LINZ.

So yep, still working on the Will and the prescription sunglasses- hoping both of those sort themselves out in the next couple of days. Then it’s just time to pack all my stuff up, send the stuff I’m not taking either to my parents or give it to charity, then get on a big plane and leave New Zealand!

Here’s an HDR shot I took of the sails at Wellington’s Queens Wharf.