In Search of Giant Squid
We arrived in our hotel room 37 hours after we left our home;
15 hours of that were spent waiting between flights in airports,
including an hour of de-icing the plane on the runway in St. Louis,
very disconcerting to those inside the plane....
Wellington reminds me of Sydney, San Francisco and Positano, all cities
built on steep hillsides above the sea. The tall city buildings are
squeezed onto a narrow piece of fan-shaped valley, but from there and
the water's edge of the bay, everything is up.
On our walk toward the
city, we marveled at the construction of homes, hotels, car parks, all
clinging to the hillside. We observed one old woman load her groceries
and herself into an electric one-person funicular which climbed the
hundred feet to her home. Looking carefully through the trees at other
homes hovering over our heads we saw several more permutations of the
same idea. To me it's fascinating to think of how living on a
precipice would alter my lifestyle.
Driving on the left is something I'm going to have to get used to all
over again. Not that I'm doing any driving. Walking is dangerous
enough!! In crossing the street, I've already stepped out in front of
an oncoming car by forgetting to look right first instead of left.
I've got to keep reminding myself and not walk in a daze. The same
rules apply to pedestrians on the sidewalk and I find myself constantly
walking upstream into a flow of pedestrians walking toward me. Same
with staircases - left not right. I'm always wrong on the right!.
Toilets have two buttons for flushing - a half-flush and a full-flush. You can imagine why. For water conservation, I find this a wonderful idea. We should incorporate this environmentally correct concept in the U.S.
Smithsonian Natural History Web Home Page
gene carl feldman / gene@seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov