What is the going-rate of a bucket of road paint?

Paraparaumu
clouds above the beach, with Kapiti
Island across the water

Alas, the lovely days of the South Island are a thing of the past... but I still have a few days on the North Island before I have to leave this lovely little country (by plane, thank goodness - I've never felt ill in a plane before... mildly concerned that it was going to fall out of the sky on a flight home a few years ago, but not nauseous... Not that I've got anything against boats... just boats in big waves right now... I just need to get on a nice boat that doesn't make me feel ill, like most of the ones I've been on excepting the last two :p ).

It was still raining this morning (Tuck is actually starting to look clean! If it keeps on like this all the way to Auckland I might not have to wash him...) when I got up to catch the ferry across the Cook Straight, back to the North Island.

people learning to sail
in Picton this morning

The "gloomy" weather wasn't a deterrent for some budding sailors in Picton's harbour, though! From Picton, the ferry passes through the sheltered waters of Queen Charlotte Sound (if you're wondering why there are all these places named after Queen Charlotte, but you can't remember her featuring much in history, its because she was the wife of King George III;

Paraparaumu

unlike male consorts of female monarchs, the consort of a British king is apparently a queen... or was, anyhow... maybe that's all changed... I wouldn't know...) before heading out into the considerably rougher Cook Straight proper. The boat was about an hour late leaving (something about lifeboats?), but after an only mildly-queasy three and a half hour trip, we arrived in the windy city of Wellington! Woohoo!

In a most typically Marysa-like move, I left the city almost right away; a short drive brought me to the seaside village of Paraparaumu (I think this is the most easily-pronounced location on all the signs between Wellington and here...) The town lies directly opposite Kapiti Island.

Part of the drive was along a section where they road-people are testing line paint - I've thought about the road paint down here way more than I've thought about the stuff at home. This is how the paint-system works: you've got the road, with (usually) solid white lines between the road and the grass on the side.

The beach at Paraparaumu

Then down the centre, there is a dotted white line. Even around blind corners, etc - that's just the sort of "default" centre line. Now, occasionally the line is a solid yellow with white dots on one side (or more rarely, a double yellow) if it's a high crash area or something and they really don't want you trying to pass. But for the most part, dotted white. Now, this is slightly confusing in cities such as Wellington and Dunedin where multi-lane one way streets were in abundance. The one-way signs aren't very big or obvious, and you can't tell that the street only goes one way by looking at the road paint. Luckily there were always cars ahead of me on streets like these. :p Mostly I find myself wondering how much the save on paint every year. Maybe white paint costs less than yellow, but more than that, lets say the dotted line covers 1/3 of what a solid single line would cover (let along a solid double line). That's a LOT of paint not on the road! On the topic of roads, they have very well maintained roads down here. Sure, most of the North Island and parts of the South probably don't get cold enough for frost heaves or anything, but I've seen maaaaaybe one pothole, and it was filled in. The scant "rough" patches of road which would be relatively normal at home have a lot of "caution uneven surface" signage and pylons, etc. (Also, they have a LOT of pylons. Think of the density of blue fencing at UBC, then turn all the fences into pylons.

Looking south down towards Wellington

Anyhoo, here in Paraparaumu, I'm staying at a cute little old hotel/hostel combo thingy called "Barnacles Inn." Its right by the beach (granted, everything here is right by the beach :p ), and so far I appear to have the room to myself :) (its only about a 40 minute drive to Wellington, so most backpackers stay there). For some odd reason, the I have a feeling the lady at the office thought I didn't understand English, because when she was telling me where to park it went pretty much like "Parking is on the grass. The GRASS. Big green. G-R-A-S. Grass." (Yes, just the one s in grass... :p ). So, with Tuck tucked away on the g.r.a.s., I went for a quick walk before it cooled down too much. Fortunately for me, the rain had already cleared out of here by the time I arrived, allowing for a delightful walk along the beach (without getting sand in my shoes because the sand was still wet, YES! ... I'm still shaking sand out of my pack from the Abel Tasman...) and some *spectacular* clouds to which my pictures do not begin to do justice. It has cooled down though since I was last on the North Island, whether from rain or seasonal change or a bit of both, I don't know. The South Island was pretty cool from Arthur's Pass onwards, so I finally got to use the warmer clothing I brought (I was starting to worry I'd packed it for nothing :p ).

DUCK!
Exotic fauna, eh? :D

Ducks! Speaking of ducks (not that anyone was, but now I am!), the little pond near the beach here has a LOT of ducks! Also, way back in Oamaru, where I went to try and find some penguins with the Aussie and the Torontonian, the other Canadian and I spent a rather long time practising (trying to re-teach ourselves, more like :p ) our Loon calls. I remain very bad at it, but at least I can make the noise, sometimes. Not the fluttery-part, much, but its a step in the right direction... Interestingly, the Australian had never heard of anyone making a noise like that - even though they might not have loons I thought they might make the noise anyhow and call it something else.

I continue making my way north tomorrow, as I need to be in Auckland by the 23rd.

Barnacles Inn

The vast majority of the older people I meet are British, while the people my age are mostly from, in this order: Germany, Holland/Netherlands, England, Australia, Wales, Ireland (segregating the British because that's how they say where they're from :p ), France, then a smattering from other places - more Canadians so far than Americans. Actually, hardly any Americans at all. Maybe two that I can bring to mind? One was an adventure racer and the other told me of the US's lack of Cadbury...

Random side thought (like the rest of this post wasn't full of those...): the gps has some truly hilarious pronunciations. Listening to it try to say YHA is pretty entertaining, but I think the best was back in Te Anau, when it tried to pronounce "Lakeside Drive" ... not to difficult, right? You'd think? Its not an acronym, its not a Maori word... nice and straightforward, yes? Yeah. No. Le-hack-ee sye-duh Drive was more like it...

Okay,  this is actually from yesterday,
but I had filled up a memory card and only
put the pictures from the first one
on my computer...

Things it may be a good idea for me to buy before heading home: hokey pokey chocolate and milo. :)

Okay! I will toss some pictures into this post then unleash it upon the web!

Pip pip, cheerio!

Marysa

p.s. - On a COMPLETELY unrelated note, I was talking to Nicole on facebook, and you know how it shows ads down the side of the message page? Well, I got a safety advertisement saying "Kids are safest in a booster seat until 4'9" or 80 lbs. Click to learn more." By that standard, I'm pretty sure I was still supposed to be in a booster seat at the start of tenth grade... (depends if that or is an and/or vs and either/or). Thank you, mother, for not putting me through that.

(edit: I apologize for any appalling grammar and/or spelling errors... I don't proofread these things, but after posting saw three mistakes in the first few lines that I went back and fixed, so there are very likely more. I can write properly! I just don't, necessarily, here :p ... also I like spell-check ;) )