Wellington

Yesterday we had a leisurely start after our late night (for us). We were heading down to Wellington, a 4-and-a-bit hour drive. It was all pretty uneventful. We passed some buildings shaped as what looked like foxes or wolves, great architecture, used the most over the top hi-tec public toilets and arrived at our campsite at half 3 ish. We decamped all our food into the kitchens and, very tired, headed into Wellington to have a look at Mount Victoria. The views across Wellington are fantastic, and got some above average photos, however our attempted walk was a failure. We were both very tired and couldn’t really be bothered with it and went the wrong direction anyway (confusing map) so gave up after an hour or so and headed back to the campsite. It was also very hot, so even more draining. 

That evening we had a delicious barbecue of veggies, chilli and lime marinaded chicken and halloumi, and headed to bed early in preparation for a full day in Wellington on Monday.

We took the bus into the city centre and headed straight for the Te Papa museum via the waterfront. Despite beautiful sunshine there was a pretty chilly wind blowing, and it seems that Wellington is known for being this as several engraved poems and a sculpture named ‘Solace in the Wind’ suggest a common theme. The Te Papa museum, sited at the waterfront, is a huge free museum with a wide variety of exhibits. It’s brilliant. We only looked at the second floor and gardens but there is 3 or so more floors to explore, you could easily spend a whole day there. The New Zealand nature exhibit is amazing, showing all varieties of animals both extinct and still hanging in there (including some very scary insects), it even has a colossal squid, the largest invertebrate ever caught, on display with an accompanying video on how it came to be in Te Papa. Which raised the question for both Amelia and I, why didn’t they release it back to the sea when they accidentally caught it (the expedition to the arctic was actually fishing for some large variety of fish). Great to see it and for scientists to understand it but seems pretty harmful to needlessly kill this magnificent, if weird, creature. Apart from this there’s loads of interactive exhibits from an earthquake simulator hut to an eel game (which a child very nearly reset our game near the end, much to Amelia’s horror).

The other exhibit we visited was about the New Zealander’s involvement in the Gallipoli campaign. Eye opening and depressing but again incredibly well done with a whole host of first person accounts and interactive exhibits. Leaving here it was already lunch time and we’d (Amelia had) earmarked Capital Market, an international food market, as our destination. There’s food from all over Asia sold here, we had a Filipino bbq pork bun to start and I had a delicious (but very spicy, genuinely spicy, not just me being pathetic at the sight of a chilli for once) Mexican fusion burrito bowl while Amelia had some chicken bao buns. Very full we left to check out Hannah’s Laneway, which contains numerous sweet delights including a chocolatier, peanut butter boutique (which was tragically not open), bars, restaurants and a bakery. It’s all very cool and industrial and we first headed to Leeds Street Bakery for a very large salted caramel cookie and ridiculous peanut butter and jam thing that Amelia got. So delicious but we were so so full by this point. To aid the digestion we waddled over to Cuba Street for an explore. There’s a wide variety of cool shops and eateries along here so we spent a while exploring them before heading to a pub (Malthouse) then a cool bar (The Library) to debrief. 

Arriving back at the campsite at 8ish we were both too full for dinner and too tired to do anything else really so, in preparation for our 6am rise to catch the ferry to the South Island, we got an earlyish night.