March 5: Fine penthouse living

Still grey out. Poured cats, dogs and sheep last night. Taranaki enshrouded. Driving south.
Stop briefly at the Egmont Lighthouse, a white-washed with a bright red door. Lots of small towns, relatively affluent. This area, like much of "white" New Zealand displays the "tall poppy syndrome", the socializing phenomenon where anyone who strives to achieve lots more than the group (growing taller) gets their head and shoulders chopped, whereby maintaining a status quo and normalized population. IOW, the goal is to have everyone ending up the same, with no incentive to excel and a safety net in case one falls.
Manaia, some kind of bread capitol, for a Breakfast burger, which arrives as:
BUN
Grilled onions
fried egg
Ham
Beef patty
Slice o' Beet
lettuce
mayo layer
BUN
BTW, lunch menus at takeaway joints proudly list many such stack-em-up burgers such as this, always something new for the bloke in a new place.

Down toward Wellington we drive, thru Bulls (yes, silly bull murals adorn town), Foxton (sorry, no fox murals), and Otaki before reaching the Wellington outskirts. For a city of 165,000 inhabitants, the roadways are not busy. We call ahead to the i-site and at first we get the "town is full, no vacancy" report (musical festival and Christchurch fundraising events), but then a fortunate call back lands us a 16th floor penthouse smack dab in downtown CBD (central business district). It's a gorgeous unit, about as high as any other downtown loft. Geez, nothing like being at the top of a skyscraper in a city sitting on the intersection of two sets of subducting plates, which has just been thru 2 weeks of aftershocks...
The wind whistles thru the windows all night, reminding us of where we are...
Windy Wellington.
(more pictures to come when we get a better connection)