Day 102 - Wellington to Blenheim
Trip Start
Sep 02, 2007
1
103
243
Trip End
May 01, 2008
Blenheim,
New Zealand
Thursday, December 13, 2007
In fairness I think we were still knackered after our long walk the other day, but I know that sounds a bit lame. No pun intended!
Katie was down to breakfast first, and I eventually followed her. My pancakes took bloody ages but were lovely, and we set off on our adventures full of energy.
We headed straight for Mount Victoria, which is a 10 min drive from the centre of "Welly", and which has an observation platform at the top affording very nice views of the harbour & bay below.
We then drove down to 'Oriental Bay', with every intention of doing a popular hike to the 'Red Rocks' which is apparently quite scenic, and which also has a seal sanctuary.
The road down from the observation point was also very scenic, giving a few good views most of the way down to sea level.
This was the view over the bay towards the centre of town.
By the time we got down to the hiking area the sky was clouding over again and threatening rain, so we decided against the 8km walk, feeling like wimps.
Smug wimps.
Smug DRY wimps ;)
After a spot of lunch at a nice cafe by the water we headed back into town and to the National Musuem, which was absolutely fantastic.
It's brand new and they've done a great job on it.
Neither of us are real 'culture vultures', and we aren't great at spending hours in musuems, but we really enjoyed our couple of hours in this one.
There's a great mix of Maori culture inside, and some interesting exhibits detailing the settling of New Zealand by the British (and others), plus a lot of interesting info on the geology, biology, sociology of the country today.
This is a Maori 'war canoe', built for 50 people, and over 30 metres long!
This is a traditional Maori 'meeting house', where decisions are made by the elders of the tribe.
I have absolutely no idea what THISE was, but it looked good.
Another good thing was seeing a terrific photo of the Tongariro crossing that we did a few days ago, so that we could appreciate what we'd missed due to all that bloody cloud!
Gutted :(
There was just enough time for Katie to take a 'magic carpet (chair!) ride' around New Zealand in a quasi-IMAX cinema... she loved it, as you can see below!
Time was flying by, and we had to be at the ferry terminal for 5:45pm, so we had to make a move.
Before driving to the ferry we tried to find a petrol station on the way there to avoid being shafted for not returning with a full tank to the hire company.
That seemingly easy task proved to be utterly impossible as there didn't seem to be any petrol stations within a ten minute radius of the docks in any direction! We were driving around for ages and eventually ran out of time.
We had no choice but to drop the car off with half a tank and wait for the punch in the guts on the credit card statement :(
Yet again we were unlucky with the weather (I know it's freezing at home but please give us some sympathy?!), so we knew that what was potentially a stunning 3 hour journey to the south island was more likely to be a very boring and grey journey to the south island.
This was our ferry, which was about the same size as the channel ferries which link England & France.
Despite our fears the journey was actually all right; the ferry leaves the north island via some lovely scenery, and the entrance to the south island is even nicer.
We could just about see the odd thing through the mists & cloud, but that just made it all the more frustrating!
Here are a few photos from the crossing:
You could see the odd ferry going in the opposite direction, but apart from that we had the channel to ourselves...
We arrived at the port of Picton, which looked really pretty from the water.
Once on dry land we hurried to Hertz to collect our new hire car (don't ask me why we couldn't just drive our previous car onto the ferry), only to discover that according to their records we were arriving on an earlier ferry.
As you can imagine we were DELIGHTED to discover that because we hadn't "shown up" earlier, on a ferry that we'd never been booked on (!), they had decided to cancel our reservation!
Bear in mind that it was 9:45pm, cold, and pitch black outside...
Katie wasn't in the mood to suffer fools so gave them both barrels about their incompetence, and the guy behind the desk very sensibly amended the booking and gave us a car before he could be eaten alive by a distinctly unimpressed Mrs Katharine Fey!
We belatedly got into our new car, and drove the 35kms to the town of Blenheim.
We're staying in a charming little backpackers with great facilities, even if our room is nearly the exact same dimensions as our bed! Talk about a "bed room"...
Tomorrow we're heading off to a town on the the east coast called Kaikoura, to watch some dolphins & maybe even some whales.
Katie will (hopefully!) also be able to go swimming with the dolphins too.
Sadly with my dodgy ears I'll have to look on from the boat in a depressed fashion, but I'm sure she'll love the experience which she totally deserves after all the driving she's done recently!
Ok, I'm now about to see if there's anywhere near the Franz Josef glacier where I can watch the Liverpool v Man Utd game early on Monday morning... COME ON YOU LEGENDS!
Take care of you & your's, lots of love,
Al & Katie xx
