4th – 5th October 2012
‘Let’s climb those steps!’ A rising angry voice scolded me.
I flinched.
And tried to bury my head into my jumper.
There was no escaping from this tiny creature called Tone. Her eyes flashed with indignation and her face was truly becoming bright red enough to make a tomato feel jealous. I searched the eyes of my other walking buddies, Danielle who was too busy muttering dark curses at me while she jabbed furiously at the map, and Bente who was also too busy rubbing her eye frantically as something flew into it earlier. Her other eye simply narrowed at me. I looked away.
‘Let’s climb those steps!’ Tone stood up to me and gnashed her teeth.
Okay, maybe I should tell you what’s happening. We were lost. In someone’s back yard. On the side of Mount Victoria, Wellington’s Mountain. It was freezing cold and the wind was whipping the decaying remains of summer into a frenzy…one of which landed in Bente’s eye. And it was all because of me, especially when I uttered the dark words at the bottom of the mountain,
‘Let’s climb those steps.’
I thought it was the right way. I mean, if you see steps only going UP the mountain, surely you’ll find the summit sooner or later and that’s why I picked out those steps. Not because I was far too lazy to go AROUND the mountain first to reach the official trail to the summit. After a gazillion steps up to where we are, spending time putting layers on and off more than a prostitute takes off her knickers, we finally reached to someone’s back yard. We grew suspect at the last 50 steps, when they suddenly became wooden and I nearly fell down where a step should have been. Now we were into someone’s backyard. And it was all because of me and my mouth ‘let’s climb those steps.’
I smiled weakly at the 3 glaring girls, who may I add willingly and blindly followed me, probably wasn’t amused when I said ‘we would be laughing about this later on.’ We were soon interrupted by a wheezing postman with thighs of thunder as he promptly delivered his mail for this house. I looked after him in hope thinking that he would show us the way out of this residential area of alleyways, but no, he gave us all a weird look and promptly went down the steps to the bottom. So what I’ve done is led the girls up to someone’s backyard via their personal gazillion steps. Who would have that?!
Feeling that I was about to be castrated bloodily, I ran. Down the steps. Towards Wellington, where we arrived yesterday from a great day with seals from kaikoura.
But luckily, Danielle found a small way out halfway down the steps to lead us on the road AROUND the mountain to get back on the trail. We did. Phew. I hung back just in case.
What should have taken a simple hour to the top lasted 2 hours and we had to get back to the hostel for lunch. So we hurried up and promptly nearly got blown off the top of the mountain. They don’t call Wellington, the ‘Windy City’ for nothing! Well, despite the moody weather at the top, we were pretty awed by the simple ‘fish mouth’ look of the place – see the post ‘The Northern Tip of New Zealand’ to find out why. But first, check out these sweet as pics.
On the way down, the girls were in a much better mood and accused me of being a dumb-bum (kiwi slang for a fool) and definitely went down the correct way and found it! So we made it! With the girls in a more cheerful mood (thank god!) and deciding what to have for lunch.. they could see I was excited what I’ll be doing after lunch with Bente. I’m going on a Lord of the Rings Film Tour. And I just cannot wait!
But as we came down to a different place, we needed to get back to the hostel through a new place of Wellington. Taking charge, I promptly pointing and said,
‘Let’s go down this way!’
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