Travel Diary - Day Twenty Three

Day Twenty Three – Plans Going Awry
Monday 21 Sep 09

We had all sorts of plans for today. I was to visit this place and the next and meet this person and the next and somehow it all just fell apart. After a number of phone calls none of the meetings that had been lined up were going to happen today. So instead we would make Monday my day off and turn Tuesday into the meeting day. Except that now the meetings are spread over Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

To make it go with a little more interest we decided to visit the national museum. Something told me it would not be like Te Papa. Unfortunately my instinct was rather more accurate than I hoped. A lot of the material looked like it hadn’t been touched since the date on the card (mostly in the 1950s). An enormous amount of the material was named but had no provenance or even date. And by enormous I may be giving the impression that there were a lot of exhibits. In fact there were maybe four living rooms worth of exhibits downstairs and about the same upstairs. Upstairs housed lots of stuffed animals and birds and fish and a geological display that amounted to several dozens of mineral samples that had been named and grouped according to type. Kind of disappointing all up.

Following that we went out to lunch – have been out for meals several times this week and I’m starting feel a little bloated even though I am only eating a little at most meals. The heat tends to reduce my appetite somewhat, which is a good thing because I’m not getting much decent exercise.

After lunch I went to the Botanic Gardens again. This time I decided I would spend some time wandering around and looking a bit further than I had last time. I should note here that I had been warned not to venture too far as there may be vagrants hanging around who might want to attack me. Well I started to wander, found some lovely spots, took some nice photos and eventually found some people fishing in a pond. Some of them had caught some fish and I asked if I could have a look. I’m not 100% certain but they sure looked like pictures I have seen of Piranha. To add to that guess the guy that had caught them warned that one of them wasn’t properly dead yet and it could take a finger off with one bite. I’m not sure how accurate that description was, but the teeth looked almighty sharp! I wandered a little further before realising that I had almost made it right across the garden and when I looked around it was certainly a place that might be chosen for less legal activities. Whoops! I turned around and wandered back out trying to look and act relaxed and wanting to run just a little. Of course, nothing happened, but there’s nothing like a little fear to make the knees just a bit wobbly .

Once I found my way to paths more travelled I found some lovely spots to simply sit and enjoy my surroundings. All in all a rather pleasant afternoon, including the sidetrack…

Back home and out for dinner – I could get a bit tired of that to be honest, but I also realise that this is actually an opportunity for Keith to go out for meals that he wouldn’t normally get because the price of many of the restaurants would be out of his means. So in that sense it has been nice to be the opportunity for him to enjoy himself and be blessed in that small way.