Round the Bays 2025

Our earliest start – ever!

With the roads on every side of the 21km Round the Bays course closing for the duration of the race, it was an early start for the stalwarts of Wellington Batucada. Putting on my shoes and socks in the dim pre-dawn light, I imagined thousands of runners doing the same thing across the city, all of us getting ready for the marathon day ahead.

The organisers had very kindly sorted out a dedicated parking place for us, right near where we were to perform at Greta Point – but, yeah, the only caveat was “be there before 7:00am or you won’t get in”. For the early-arriver types, this meant getting up at around 4:30am – just a few hours after we had put our heads down to sleep following the previous night’s Diversity Festival performance. Crikey!

It was a lovely pinky dawn sky that accompanied us as we made our sleepy way to the (as yet unopened) Greta Point Café. No wind, a decent bit of cloud cover, so not too scorchingly hot, altogether a good-looking morning.

The first runners in the 21km Half Marathon set off at 7:45am, which meant we had to get in place soon after, so we were ready to make lots of noise and cheer on the runners as they came through. Unfortunately, at around the same time as the runners started running, the owners of the café opened their doors, resulting in a giant Batucada queue for coffee and breakfast snacks, which had the potential to disrupt our carefully laid plans. But hey – Batucada never misses a cue (even when we’re in a queue!), and we all managed to get into place just as the first of the Half-Marathoners came racing past.

It was our job to make heaps of (rhythmical) noise, cheer on the runners, wave and shout encouragement and generally give everyone in the race a wee lift as they made their way down Evans Bay Parade. A few of us were sent up onto the tiny stage in the middle of the road to do even more enthusiastic playing, waving, dancing and jumping around, accompanied by sponsor-clad cheerleaders waving signs and pompoms. Super high energy required – on no sleep and minimal caffeine that probably hadn’t quite kicked in yet. Brilliant fun!

Fellow chocalho player Amanda has a friend who lives in some quite nice apartments nearby, and she told me that by about 8:15am the entire block was united in their “total lack of appreciation” for us (to put it nicely). Soz people! Only once a year, great cause, community event, promoting good health and good vibes and all that good stuff….

To (I’m sure) the great relief of those apartment-dwellers we had a short break once the Half Marathon runners had passed by, before the huge wave of 8.4km Fun Runners came through. Time to create another giant queue at the café, grab a coffee and a bit more breakfast and chill out for half an hour or so.

Wellington Batucada playing samba, funk, six-eight, merengue and having a bit of a jam at Round the Bays 2025
Video by Kelly Etuata

Our second show was quite a bit longer than the first one (there are quite a few more runners to pass by in this second wave), and we took turns to be on-stage giving it our all as the runners raced past giving it their all. It’s an interesting (and novel) experience to be pretty much soloing your instrument about 20m from the rest of your section, with the director’s back to you as she gives signals to the main contingent of the band. It feels like your first level of loyalty is to your fellow stage performers – so you keep in time with each other – and then secondarily focusing on keeping time with the rest of the band on the other side of the road. Coolio!

So many runners grinning their heads off as they saw us, and cheering us as we cheered them, and applauding, some busting a few moves as they passed by – it was super-cool to be a part of this classic Wellington event once more, providing a burst of energy to keep the runners on track. There were one or two who were completely taken with our rhythms, and caused traffic jams amongst their fellow rummers as they danced madly around the racecourse – hopefully they will all decide to join the band in some capacity. We’ve already had a few enquiries…

The final tail-enders came through at about 11:00am, by which time even the most enthusiastic amongst us were running out of juice. It was important that we didn’t leave any of the last runners with no support though, so we hung on until absolutely everyone had passed by. Our lovely surdo player Yin (John) Zhu did a magnificent celebratory run across the finish line, arms aloft in triumph, which amused the heck out of us – and then the dancers took over the road for a final dance-off before all our arms and legs fell off.

What a morning!

We are completely indebted to our fantastic gig co-ordinator, Gordo, who practically had to shove the lot of us out of bed to get a nice big group to play this gig – and I’m really glad he did, because it was great! You rock Gordo! Thank you for all your hard mahi. It’s so thoroughly appreciated.