Sunday morning was a struggle coping with sore heads and
hearts. We decided a bit of culture might soften the blow of the previous
evening. To be honest, I’d have happily jumped on a plane home. We headed into
the centre of Wellington and had a look around Te Papa, the National Museum of
New Zealand. They had some fantastic Maori and Pacific Islands displays but we
were extremely lucky to see the Webb Ellis cup that was on display there from 9th
– 14th October.
The closest any Irishman got to the Webb Ellis
We also attended a ‘Haka experience’ which we thought would
be a few videos explaining the history of the Haka and a few guys doing one for
real. It turned out that we were the ones ‘doing it for real’. Six at a time,
you entered an oval shaped room and these interactive figures appeared on the
wall in front of you to ‘train’ you how to do the Haka. After 5 minutes they
get you to do it for real (male and female versions are slightly different)
and then they show it on video outside afterwards to everyone’s great
amusement. We can safely say the All
Blacks have nothing to fear from our pathetic attempt. By then we’d laughed so
much that Saturday evening's gloom had lifted. I took a rather ‘tired and
emotional’ call from a friend in Dublin who admitted to still feeling very
upset at the result. I prescribed 8 hours sleep and an attempt at the Haka as a
cure.
Te Papa is also home to ‘THE GIANT SQUID’ a monster squid
with eyes the size of footballs. A fisherman was shark fishing and the shark
was attacked by this giant squid. I know! Can you imagine? This thing is over 4 meters long. Lindsay watched the
story on a 3D short movie and jumped out of her skin when the squid made his move. She passed on the idea of calamari for lunch.
We spent the afternoon back at the twisty, windy house and
then walked into Wellington for the evening games (Australia v South Africa at
6pm and then the All Blacks v Argentina at 8:30pm). Food and beer were had at
the Thistle Inn, Wellington's oldest pub (where a kind, but drunk Kiwi implored us to go to 'the only Welsh bar in the southern hemisphere' - we passed) before heading home.
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