The big bosses down in Wellington wanted to meet Bryan and his fellow new hire Biswajit. Upon their arrival on a Thursday, they were given a tour of IRL's offices and labs and introduced to their Kiwi counterparts there. Later in the day they gave twenty-minute presentations of the work that had gotten them hired, or to Bryan's mind, gave mini dissertation defenses. On Friday, after a day of meetings, Bryan was met in W
ellington by Jane who flew down to spend the weekend with him there.
People had told Bryan and Jane that Wellington was a great town when the weather was nice, but unfortunate
ly, they wouldn't know because it rained and was windy practically the entire time they were there. The rain and wind, however, did not deter them for getting in a great Wellington experience.
On the first night, they climbed the highest volcano in Wellington, Mt. Victoria (named for
the queen, of course), and looked out over the city and the Cook Straight toward the South Island.
The next day, upon waking up to discover that it was again raining, Bryan and Jane spent the morning at Te Papa, the national museum, which bore much in common with the Auckland Museum, just with an emphasis on New Zealand earthquakes instead of on New
Zealand volcanoes; it seems that a fault line runs right through Wellington.
In the afternoon, the sun came out for a bit, and so Bryan and Jane decided to check out the some of the bush surrounding the city. It only took thirty minutes of walking from the center of the capital to get to the middle of absolutely no where: no buildings, rural roads, and trees as far as one could see. Could you do the same in Washington, DC or London?
The particular bush walk that Bryan and Jane embarked upon took them over a canopy walk
(a bridge that passed through the canopy of the bush), past a couple waterfalls, over some
streams and through dense areas of bush.
Deep inside the forest, Bryan and Jane even got to see and touch the North Island's oldest Kauri tree.
When they had completed their circuit through the
Wellington bush, Bryan and Jane caught a bus back into the middle of the capital. They got off a little before the bus got back to their hotel so that they could check out the
government building, known affectionately (and not so affectionately) as the Beehive or just the Hive. The Capital Rotunda or the Halls of Parliament it was not, but those buildings wouldn't have fit in in this big town of a capitol.
