Wellington

We have accidentally spent more time in Wellington than intended.  My computer is still on US time and I neglected to realize that we were only supposed to spend 2 nights in Wellington.  We missed our ferry.  Then Jake rebooked not realizing he had left out passage for the car, so late Sat. afternoon we think we have passage for us and the car now.  We had to switch hotels too because ours was fully booked.

Diving on the Wellington waterfront

The good part is that we like Wellington, although I think we’ve seen about all the sites that we wanted to see.  We got here late afternoon and walked down to the waterfront harbor area.  It is well designed with lots of different sorts of spaces to hang out in.  The water seems to be pretty clean and there are a couple areas with diving platforms and floating docks.  The dragonboat teams practice and you can rent any number of different water sport items from paddleboards to sit on top kayaks.

Botanic Garden rose garden

Eternal flame

The first morning I explored the botanic garden at the top of the cable car line.  It is nicely laid out with lots of different garden styles and a lengthy network of paths.  The visitor information center is located in the center of the garden more or less with a view into the tree canopy.  At the bottom of the garden are the glass houses with a café and small gift shop.  There is a flat area there reclaimed from a former cemetery that is now a huge rose garden.  And sitting quietly off to the side is a small garden space where the peace flame sits over a small pond with a waterfall blocking out background noises.

In the afternoon we explored the Te Papa Museum, an enormous museum covering everything from art to social history to natural history.  There are very good exhibits on New Zealand’s social history covering the Maori tribes settlement of the islands, the arrival of the British, and more recent social issues such as LGBTI rights.  The Natural History floor had a fun little earthquake simulator, but warning signs to parents whose children may have been traumatized by the Christchurch earthquake in 2011.  They also had footage of the eruption of Mt. Tongariro in 2012.  There was a nicely designed exhibit of shells and birds that made it easy to id them.  There was also an interactive exhibit on native and introduced fauna.  The third floor was about people and the environment.  It starts with a room where you can pretend you’re a customs inspector searching for unwanted plants and animals.  They also talk about the impacts from agriculture and the timber industry.  The Maori used fire and cultivated land extensively, so by the time the Europeans settled NZ had lost about 30% of its forest cover if I remember right.  It has now lost an additional 50%. 

After absorbing all the information we could stand, we went and sat on Oriental Beach for awhile.

In the evening the area near the museum had a Cuban band playing so we listened to that and danced a little before going in search of dinner.  We ended up at one of the places on the water, Bin44, where Jake got green lipped mussels and I got snapper served with steamed vegetables. It was good, I’d go there for the view more than the food.  Lunch I would rate similarly.  We decided on Chinese in honor of Chinese New Year and ate at Jasmin near our hotel.  It was a relatively inexpensive buffet of decent Chinese food.

On the morning of day 2 (after rearranging our new ferry transport and hotel), I caught a bus up to the Wilton Bush Reserve, a native garden and reserve about 20 minutes from town.  They have very extensive native plant gardens that are very well designed and labeled.  The gardens are designed for different climate areas of the country.  They have also restored the surrounding forest and trees and labeled along the paths.  You can also pick up brochures for a nature walk and a NZ treasures walk that further describe particular plants or ecological relationships.  There didn’t seem to be many staff around but they do offer occasional guided walks (although none during our visit unfortunately).

In the afternoon we visited the old St. Pauls church built in 1856 in English gothic style, but out of local woods.  The woodwork is beautiful and there is a nice historical description of how the land was acquired probably illegally from the Maori and the church was built.