Category Archives: North Island

Still very windy and a cold 10 degree C, so a perfect day to visit the Te Papa National Museum on the quayside in downtown Wellington. Heavily advertised as a world-leading and innovative interactive museum – Te Papa, which translates as ‘Our Place’ tells the stories of New Zealand – its land, people, culture and history. There are sections aimed at adults and children using an inter-active multi-media approach to engage and engross. We spend about 5 hours and still don’t manage to see it all, although it is by no means over-whelming large, in fact quite the opposite and first impressions are of a huge space and not a lot of exhibits. There are the usual stuffed wild life and displays of various natural and man-made artifacts, but that’s where the similarity with a traditional museum ends. Our Space inter-active wall onto which visitors can load their impressions of what makes New Zealand. There is the Colossal Squid4.2m long, weighing 495 kg and preserved in formaldahide – unfortunately not open to view but there is a video of it’s capture and preservation. Other sections include videoed interviews with various Nealanders including a Chinese man who speaks fluent Maori, high ground sheep farmers, a Maori delivery man who beatboxes in his spare time; a great section on the earth’s forces and the destruction and havoc caused by volcanoes, landslips, tsunamis, cyclones earthquakes (including an after-shock experience); and a carved marae (Maori meeting place). A fascinating place to spend a windy, cold day! Continue reading →

For a capital city, Wellington is tiny (population 164,000) and remarkably low rise.  This windy city is perched on the west shore of a magnificent natural harbour, hemmed in by hillsides which dwarf the few high rise buildings that are concentrated in the city centre.  Single storey detached, well-spaced  homes cling to  the the hillsides overlooking the bay.  On the north shore the narrow coastal strip is only wide enough to accommodate the highway and railway line on a ledge conveniently created when an earthquake in the mid nineteenth century raised the shore by a several metres.  We are at the ferry port by 7.15am.   It is a gloriously sunny day with hardly a cloud in the sky and we have a wonderfully clear view of the whole of Wellington Harbour. 

Approaching the South Island you could be forgiven for thinking that it is uninhabited;  there is not a single building in sight on the wild and rugged shoreline and even as we turn into Marlborough Sounds only the odd isolated house comes into view.  The hills drop down dramatically on both sides of the Sound to the oh so blue sea.  The next hour of the journey is through dramatic and almost untouched scenery (there are signs of logging), bays and channels opening to left and right.  The ferry journey from Wellington on North Island to Picton on  South Island has taken around 3 and half hours – much longer than we anticipated – it hardly looks any distance on the map!  Picton is a nestled at the head of Queen Charlotte  Sound;  it’s hard to conceive that in the height of the summer this small village with a population of 4000 is capable of handling 2000 ferries a day!

The landscape of the South Island is much wilder and more rugged than the North.  As we drive south towards Kaikoura on the east coast the hills tower above the road.   Rich green tree-covered hillsides soon give way to hills covered with little else but rough brown grass.  Winding roads occasionally reveal an oasis of planted forests of pine or neat, vivid green vineyards standing out against their brown surroundings, many clothed in white netting.   This is the famed Marlborough wine producing region of New Zealand.  In the distance the dark mountains of the Inland Kaikouras range, their peaks shrouded in cloud, provide a menacing backdrop.  Just outside Kaikoura we stop at a viewpoint which turns out to be a vantage point for a large colony of seals.   Only a few yards away on the rocks huge seals are resting whilst 10 to 15 pups are frolicking in a rock pool! Amazing.

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An early morning dip in the spa pools starts the day nicely.  But what was intended to be a quick half-an-hour turns into over an hour as we get chatting to two English couples.  One couple from  Enfield have left their children in charge at home and in an ironic twist on the usual gap-year syndrome have taken three months out to travel NZ and Australia.  The other couple from Plymouth are doing a similar trip through NZ and Oz.  So our intended early start to Wellington is delayed and we don’t get away until around10am.  We take a break to view the stunning Huka Falls.  It’s here that New Zealand’s longest river, the Waikato, is forced through a narrow gorge to produce a fearsome torrent of extraordinarily blue water and white foam surging at a rate of 60 litres a second  over a 10 metre drop into a swirling pool below.  It’s possible to see the falls from several vantage points on both sides of the river as well as walk along the edge of the unfenced gorge as the water rushes by a few feet below – something unimaginable in the UK!

From Huka Falls we make our way on Highway 1 to Wellington a journey of about 400km which is going to take us the rest of the day.  This takes across the central plateau, which is far from flat – it is home to the three massive peaks of Tongariro, Ruapehu and Ngaurunhoe.  The descent down to Taupo provides a spectacular view of this vast water-filled crater and New Zealand’s largest lake.  The road runs along the edge of the east shore of the lake.  We are seeing more sheep now and the number of butterflies flitting in the verges and across the road is quite amazing.  South of Tongariro National Park the highway runs for 56km through the inappropriately named Rangipo Desert, which isn’t actually a desert, but a windswept and bleak brown grassland almost devoid of trees.  Part of the road is subject to closure in bad weather which begs the question how traffic get down south when the main north/south highway is out of operation.  At Wairouru we pass the perplexingly named Angkor Wat Bakery and Coffee Shop which seems to be a favourite with the biker community.    We arrive in Wellington in the late afternoon.  Tonight we  ‘treat’ ourselves to a cabin – we have an early start tomorrow, the ferry leaves at 8.30am and Wellington is windy and damp.

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