NZ Day 8 - Brave Greg!

Welcome!

What did Greg do on this day?????

Yes, he bungy jumped!!!

He was excited to experience the free fall.

This is the platform: 

And that's the river, far, far below: 

While I was waiting (Greg was the first jump of the morning, and before his experience, there was a lot of testing of equipment and organization), I got to know Chris.

He's the cat of Taupo Bungy.  He showed up and they took him to the vet and got him cleaned up and now they feed him and he hangs out and kills mice.

And he sleeps in the beanbags! 

We watched the preparations. 

 Greg was calm and brave, as always.

This is the boat that transports people back to shore. 

They hooked up all his safety equipment and the bungy cord itself. 

And then they took Greg to the very edge. 

And he jumped off!

He had to walk up a steep hill to get back up to the platform. 

What a stud! 

T-shirt purchased: 

Certificate of courage earned!!! 

Before we left Taupo,

we measured the heights of things in our motel again . . . 

in this motel, the doorknob was very low.

But the shower head was high - hooray! 

 And then we were on our way to Wellington!

I loved this sign to merge like a zip (= zipper = cars alternate)

We hit a couple of second-hand stores and I would have purchased this couch (for our patio)

if I wouldn't have had to transport it to Arizona.

Here's what I was wearing:

jeans: Style & Co from Macy's
blouse, socks, shoes, sweater: Target
bag: Betsey Johnson

Greg got a sandwich for the road -

glazed ham this time.

Tied with a bow!

We saw lots of lovely sheep.  They are very peaceful. 

Look at the name of this road! 

We started seeing bigger mountains. 

And they sometimes call "kilometers" "klicks"!

Turns out we were both bursting, so we stopped at this army memorial and museum to use the toilets. 

They had some weapons: 

And a gift store where we bought some little toys for our nieces. 

There was a model of a dude jumping out of a plane hanging high up on the wall.

Look at the name of that town! 

There are LOTS of signs reminding drivers to drive reasonable speeds and stay alert. 

This town is known for their boot!

The landscape just kept being beautiful: 

This sign made us laugh . . . almost as much as the hand-written one that said, "Free pony poo". 

We could've bought horse poo, too!

Oftentimes, in the late afternoon, we'd see a farmer on a four-wheeler "driving" his cows home.  The cows would all line up and walk the path in a row.  It was really cute. 

The number in a red circle is the speed limit. 

  

This doesn't really look like a warning of upcoming bumps to me . . . 

it looks like something else.

I had my camera in my hand almost the entire time we were on the road, because many interesting things came and went like lightning!

We arrived in Wellington and went out to walk around a bit: 

It's on the sea, so we walked to the harbor and saw some of the art along the water: 

There were installations around the shops, too.

This is a woman made of metal words standing in front of the library.

Eventually we found some dinner at the Pita Pit - hooray! 

Look at all the lovely sauces!

I ate myself happy! 

Here's our cute little hotel in Wellington.

Check back next time to find out more about our lovely ferry trip to the South Island!