Having returned the campervan, we spent a couple of nights in Auckland and a fabulous trip up the Sky Tower
before boarding the Intercity bus to Wellington (should have been a long 11 hour journey but due to problems with the bus it was nearly 13hours – but we did get to see some beautiful scenary in the Tongariro National Park – “Mount Doom” from Lord of the Rings – proper name Mt Ngauruhoe capped with snow.
We then spent 2 days in Wellington exploring before heading over to South Island.
The infamous Wellington winds held off and the sun shone. We watched cricket in The Basin Reserve,
rode the Wellington Cable Car
and checked out the cable car museum at the top, wandered the harbour front where remnants of its working history still stands – old cranes
and many of the sheds now house event spaces and restaurants, Andy’s tried to open the safe in the beautiful Old Bank Shopping Arcade,
visited the new Cathedral
and Old St Pauls Church (a beautiful wooden church, now an historic site and mainly used for weddings),
admired the old and new government buildings – you can see why it is called the Beehive
– and then met some lovely veterans at the memorial service at the National War Memorial on Armistice Day.
It was interesting to see a memorial to those that perished in the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic in the Pukehea National War Memorial Park, among memorials from other countries like America, the Pacific Islands, France and the UK.
Oh, and we a couple of very nice local breweries too (Panhead and Whistling Sisters)!!!!
And then, as we were leaving, we spotted this great Christmas Tree made from traffic cones! Not sure if this was a tongue-in-cheek nod at the sheer number of cones there seem to be in New Zealand or not!!!
We returned to Wellington for a night before heading back up to Auckland for our flight out and took the opportunity to visit the huge Te Papa Museum. It’s mostly free, although you may have to pay for certain exhibitions throughout the year. We visited the Gallopoli: The Scale of our War section, which was put together with the help of the Weta Workshops. It’s very interesting and well exhibited, following the stories of 8 different New Zealanders and their experiences, with quite haunting models at 2.4 times their normal size of the people. It is definitely worth a visit, and at the moment, it is planned to stay in the museum until Anzac Day 2025.
