Chilean tunnel vision

While driving to work last night I noticed some giant pirate-ship like masts of one huge sailing boat towering over Queens Wharf. Thinking this was a strange sight in the 21st century I went to investigate, and found a large Spanish navy ship which seemed a little bit confused over whether it was a modern warship, or an 18th century explorer. It was metal hulled and clearly had engines to power itself, and yet it boasted magnificent sails bundled up at the base of the masts. Intermittent commands were issued over loud speaker in a language that I couldn't understand (Spanish), but which sounded cool.
The ship's name is the Esmeralda. And even as I research the ship to write this paragraph, I have discovered it is not a Spanish ship at all. It belongs to the Chilean navy. It is the second tallest and longest sailing ship in the world and carries a crew of 390. When sailing, it is powered by 39 sails on four masts. I should try and get on board to look around, afterall I did used to deliver pizzas to Carlos, the Chilean ambassador to Wellington.


The other day I went biking in Tunnel Gully, north of Upper Hutt. It is a stunning area of native bush and parkland, made more interesting by the leftover infrastructure of the old Hutt Valley to Wairarapa rail line, a winding and narrow incline used before the 8.9km Rimutaka tunnel was completed in 1955.
Pictured is the Mangaroa tunnel, built in 1878. It's 200m long, and it gets pretty spooky in the middle when you can't see the walls of the tunnel (let alone the bike you are riding on) and can only focus on the pinprick of light at the end and keep riding towards it, hoping you don't collide with the walls or any monsters/trolls that happen to be lurkng.