Entries Tagged 'Out and about' ↓

Well the online paper at any rate … ‘Stingrays bask in Wellington shallows’ … will have to wait for tomorrow to see if I made it to the real thing. Very exciting! On the front page of stuff.co.nz at the moment – I’m credited as the photographer and quoted and everything! Not so nice to keep rushing down passed the terrible news of the fires in Australia to see my story.

And the photo I took doesn’t look too bad ‘in print’ either!

Went the long way to the movies last night, had to go see if they were still there. Yep. Much windier so really hard to see in through the waves but spotted 2 of the smaller ones.

Mother said I should send one of my photos into the ‘paper’. I did and a reporter just rang me about 5 minutes ago!! Asked questions and thanked me for the photo. Perhaps I’m going to be in the ‘paper’! Keep a look out.

Thanks to my Orange Haired friend we found out that the demolition on Willis Street was bigger than first thought. We’ve taken a look around the back and it pretty much is the entire block that’s been destroyed. What I can’t believe is that they have knocked down the apartments-on-stilts that were there. I can remember when they were building those! They’d been there less than 10 years. Such a big hole there now. And no sign of what’s taking it’s place.

Made sure when we were out today that we went back to the lagoon to see if the stingrays were still there. They were! At first we just saw the little group of ‘small’ ones near the pier however when we were leaving we walked back up over the City to Sea bridge and there were a couple of groups of people on the bridge pointing and looking down and exclaiming “look at that one go!” So we looked – and indeed – there was a very large one swimming quite quickly around the lagoon.

About that time a group of mummies (yes, more 7s costumes) wandered out onto the pier to jump into the lagoon for a dip.

The crowd up on the bridge started rippling with concern “oh no. He’s going to jump. They don’t know there’s stingrays in there!” Too late. In went the first guy. So far the stingray had shown no sign of attacking or eating the little fish that were swimming all over and around them in the lagoon, so what interest was a bandaged-wrapped-beer-flavoured human going to be? LOTS! The big one circling the lagoon turned sharply and began swimming straight for the guy. A woman on the bridge started yelling down “HEY. YOU. MUMMIES! GET OUT OF THERE – THERE’S A STINGRAY COMING!” Yeah yeah har har har whatever lady. Until they saw it themselves and started calling and grabbing for their friend. He scrambled out of the water just as the stingray went by in a ha-ha-made-you-scared swim-by. The mummies all stood looking in and goading and elbowing each other to be the next one to go in. Then they all left rather promptly!

The big stingray came up quite close to the wharf and could easily be seen flapping his, ummm, arms? wings? At one point he came very close to the surface and flapped out in the open.

Tried a couple more amateur marine shots!

I found an article on stuff.co.nz this afternoon dated early January that said that a few stingrays had been seen in the shallow water around Oriental Beach – that they came into the shallows in the summer to bask in the sun – watch out F.I.L! Oh, and another article updated just this minute saying that a guy attacked on a beach in Nelson by a shark was now thought to actually have been a stingray! Oh no!

Had various coffee, juice, rest stops around town today and saw many more costumes, and some of the same people we saw yesterday. Some we saw today were:

• ballerinas (guys actually)
• babies
• the Bucket Fountain (iconic Wellington fountain in Cuba St)
• Hari Krishnas
• guys in pink winter pajamas
• guys in blue nighties
• Hooters girls (guys actually)
• Thomas the Tank Engine & friends
• Bravehearts
• vikings
• The Jokers (as in Heath Ledger’s Joker)
• air hostesses
• patients & nurses
• Olympic swimmer

And here are a few snaps I managed to get:

Oh, and a really bizzare thing happened at Fuel while we were watching people go by. I was chatting away to the barista about some of the costumes we’d seen, we weren’t singling out any orange ones and I wasn’t waring any (visible) orange (other than my hand bag) and a guy that had arrived and was waiting for his order looked straight at me and said “Did you see the guy that was a carrot? Wasn’t he great? Oh, and those guys dressed up as orange traffic cones.”  Ummmm, do you know me? Out of all the costumes it seemed pretty freaky that he chose those to ask me about.

Yikes! Went for a walk around the waterfront yesterday and when we went passed Frank Kitts lagoon I thought I saw something flit in the shallow water – thinking it might’ve been the jumping fish I’d see there a couple of years ago I went out on to the little pier thing to have a look. Turned out it was a bird scooping up little fish but when I looked into the water I saw stingrays! 3 of them! Right up close. The first one I was staring at looked dead. It was just sitting there, and I couldn’t understand why they’d be right in town. In the shallows. (Not that I know much about stingrays). A couple of other people noticed them too and a wise looking man said he’d never seen them in this close before. I went around to take a closer look at one of the others and he had his eyes open – was staring at me! There was a bit of a breeze across the lagoon so hard to get clear photos, but you should definitely see they’re stingrays.

(You can see his eyes open in this one, honest!)

The Rugby 7’s tournament is here this weekend on its annual tour of countries that play rugby with 7 per team (oh god what do I know anyway?) Seems it’s more about gangs of people getting together and all dressing the same and drinking enormous amounts of alcohol and making their way through town to the stadium.

We had a coffee at a cafe with outdoor seating and watched some of the crazy fans walk and stumble by.

We saw rather a lot of costumes – here’s what we can remember:

• strawberry tarts
• Billy T’s (NZ comedian)
• Puss in Boots
• a carrot
• Spartan warriors
• army guys
• men dressed as women (including one with his dress & a piece of toilet paper caught in the back of his knickers)
• construction workers
• Girl Guides/Boy Scouts
• Smurfs
• Atom Ants
• Tangy Fruits (NZ sweets taken off the market this year after having been around forEVER)
• a yoghurt
• Heidi Klum from the Guitar Hero ad
• Mexicans
• Pirates
• bumble bees
• Pink Bats (insulation, as in the current TV ad)
• sailors
• sheep (all with ear tags with sheep-like names Baaaabara, Shaun, Rambo and one black sheep called Obaaaaaama)
• nurses
• Adam & Eve
• Rubics cube
• gridiron team (Wisconsin)
• Barbie/Ken
• i-Pod
• priest (with a toy kid stuck to the front of his trousers!)
• Mr Incredible
• life guards
• jockeys
• Fred Flinstones
• 3 blind visually impaired mice
• buzzy bees (class wooden NZ toy)
• Mormons (oh wait, they were actually some guys on their way to a wedding)

Now that they’ve rebuilt one side of Willis Street, they’ve started on the other. Not sure what’s going there though – thought the new office, apartments and shops on the first side were enough but perhaps not! There’s lots of old shops they’re pulling apart now – like Stirling Sports that was there for 25 years.

At least now we can see something’s happening. For a while there it was just end-of-line sales and boarded up windows – you could easily be mistaken in thinking that business was doomed in Wellington if you stumbled upon that part of town.

At work on a Saturday – who needs sun stroke or heat exhaustion – supposedly going to be 26 today which is pretty warm for Wellington and it sure is blue out there.

Took a road trip over to Martinborough this weekend and went to visit ‘our’ vines (well, more likely vine singular). We bought a very small parcel of Alana shares when they went up for sale 18 months ago and we’ve enjoyed the shareholder discount we sometimes get on their wine but had never actually been to the winery. It’s quite a picturesque place and it did feel kind of special that we owned a tiny part of it … we were trying to figure out what chunk could be ours, a bolt in the door, a flagstone on the terrace, a fence post, a chair in the restaurant … When we claimed aforementioned shareholder discount at the Cellar Door, the guy asked if we’d been to see our vine (note, singular) so we took up his offer to park the car up the driveway and jump across into the vines to say hi to one … whichever one … which we did!

While over there we also stopped off for lunch at the Old Winery Cafe at Margrain – always a lovely spot even though the wind was very strong.