Friday!

It's NZ festival time and we've been to a couple of things.

Tuesday night we walked through a great sound and light show

in the botanical gardens. Rode up from the CBD in the cable car

and one of the tunnels had a kaleidoscope of lights playing across the

tunnel interior as we went through - spacey! Couldn't take photos

of the installations, but a quick description of the best: the

primordial red forest of ferns with rising steam;  long, straight

 wires set up to mimic the leap to light speed as seen in Star Wars; 

kero torches in a lake, popping  like airguns; a crimson forest of

crepe myrtles; people looking like amoebas as they walked towards

a light; and old phonograph players that ran a crackly needle over

a record of broken glass while white lights zoomed around us on the ground. Fab.

Last night we went into Zealandia and had a picnic tea.

Zealandia is Wellington city's bird and animal sanctuary.

It's a fenced area around an old reservoir that is being returned

to pre European bush conditions over the next

500 years or so. Didn't see much, but almost had the place

to ourselves - it was us and the kaka.

Here's our cheesy selves at the lower end of the reservoir.

Tonight - Friday, yay! - had dinner with mum and we're now

in the clouds. Cyclone Lusi is pushing down from Fiji and

expected to give us a monster swell and some wind

and rain over the weekend.