Need your wellies in Welly!

Trip Start Jan 19, 2006
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Trip End Jan 19, 2007


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Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Last night drove just outside of Wellington and eventually found a camp spot and found a quiet road with a layby adjacent to the sea overlooking the bay - perfection! Half an hour later I heard a very loud plane take off and realised we were also adjacent to the airport runway! By this time we couldn't be bothered to go elsewhere so decided to stay as most planes don't run at night. This was generally true and we were only kept awake by the constant downpour on our roof! Next morning instead of a beautiful view across the bay it was low cloud and rain and some men about to instal some roadworks close to our van! We may write a book about where to/not to park a van in NZ after this!

Driving back into town we found the fantastic 'Pak n Save' supermarket so bought more supplies (and wine for Dave) before heading to the Te Papa museum. This is a brand new huge museum on the Wellingtown Quayside Em beside the "Beehive" - where the PM works
Em beside the "Beehive" - where the PM works
 . The museum was very well done and pretty interesting - best bits were exhibition on extreme weather/natural occurances - earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, etc. There were also some maori exhibits too which were good. Surprisingly, Dave didn't want to do the Lord of the Rings expo (has become even tighter than normal - the rest of the museum was free) so just photographed the model of the boat used when the Army of the Dead comes (apparently!).

We wander around Wellington which is a nice city and pretty easy to get around. There are some older buildings here too which makes a change! Feels quite strange to be somewhere so built up after so much time in the very quiet and provincial south island. We were going to do the cable car and Mt Victoria Lookout but weather was going against us so just went to see the parliament buildings and Beehive which was actually designed by a UK architect and has had a lot of stick for being over budget etc.

Then headed out of Welly north to find some decent weather. Roads were dual carriageway some places - wow! On south island it was all single I think and the best bits were on the west coast where most bridges were one lane and on one occasion was also shared with a train! (with no proper barriers/signals either). Loads of fruit and veggie (or vege if you are antipodean) shops on the way north and we stop after a couple of hours in a scenic viewpoint for tea and bed.
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