Fire Walking for the Guinness Book of Records in Wellington

The Fire Pixie team has returned safely and successfully from our New Zealand trip.  Such good times.

We spent the second week of our trip in Queenstown and the South Island, having adrenaline rushes and looking at gorgeous scenery, and then headed back to Wellington in time for a world record attempt at Fire Walking. 

The fire was Huge!

Neither of us had ever tried fire walking before - in the San Francisco area it usually comes with a weekend-long seminar and a hefty price tag - and so we jumped at the chance to do it in Wellington for a $20 donation (much of which went to charity).  

We dressed up in our flamey pants and headed out there at around 10:00 am to register. 

There were hundreds of people there all geared up to walk across the coals (though we were the only ones in costume.  Had this event been in San Francisco, *everyone* would have been in costume, I think).  The fire took a couple hours to burn down to manageable coals so we hung around and watched the local performers and basically jumped up and down a lot and got all excited.

When the coals were ready, we headed over (we were first in line, oh yeah). We bared our feet and wiggled our toes in the mud and tried not to be too nervous.

 

We sort of expected to be given some direction.. do we need to step light?  Step down hard?  Should we have wet feet?  Be in a trance?  But no.. the organizers just lined us up and said "go."

The fire was four steps across.  Darrell took it like a superhero:

As for me.. well, I walked calmly for the first two steps and then it got HOT so the last couple steps were more like a little skip and hop and then WHOOSH I plunged my feet into the tub of water they had waiting at the other end.

So yes.  It was hot!  They were real coals.  It was exciting.  And yes, we got burned - Darrell got a bit of a blister on his toe and Andrea, who was walking with us, got a couple blisters on one of her feet.  I seemed to get off easy with just a reddish patch on the bottom of my left arch.  We all headed across the street and put our feet in Wellington Harbor immediately afterwards, which felt amazing.

And it turns out we DID make the Guinness Book of Records - for the most consecutive fire walkers.  We also made the Wellington local paper: We're famous now!