Day 12 - Wellington

Thursday 15th January 2009 2.45pm
Good afternoon everyone!! We just had the most fun day so far on our trip! The segways were SO SO SO SO much fun – I am a genius!  We took the shuttle bus from the ship to the city at 8.30am and wandered around Wellington for a little while. We found the visitor centre and arranged for our segway tour to be at an earlier time so that we could get back to the ship before it sailed. After that, we went to the mall and bought me a t-shirt because I was too hot to wear my long sleeves.
While we were doing that, we saw a poster for the Chinese terracotta warriors on display and we went to see that. They were not the original warriors, because the Chinese government will not allow them out of China. However, they were replicas and although it would have been awesome to see the originals, it was a great experience to stand next to the very good replica versions, and learn about the burial and history all over again.

After that, we met up with everyone at Civic Square for our segway tour of Wellington. Our guide, Hedda, was lovely and taught us how to use the segways. I had a go first because it was my idea. Although I was a bit embarrassed because there were lots of people around, I got the hang of it pretty quickly. It goes on your balance, so if you lean forward it goes forward and the speed is controlled by how much of your balance is forward. To reverse, you put your weight into your heels. The handle bars move left and right and are fairly sensitive. If you go to spin too tightly at too high speeds, you go into a ‘death spin’ (Tristan) and fall off. Dad managed to fall off into the garden bed at the front of old parliament house because he was attempting to demonstrate his mad braking skills. According to Em, he did a ‘full death roll’ into a garden bed of lilies. SO funny... wish we had it on video. We were allowed to ride our segways back into the port and right up to the ship. The guys at the port security post were intrigued and we saw them playing with our segways when we were back on the ship.
Anyway, tonight is the last formal night, tomorrow is a sea day and we are rapidly coming to the end of our trip. Hope everything is well at home. Miss you!

Love Katie(written with the assistance of Jord, Tris and Em).