We did it. Wellington in a day, top to bottom - so to speak.

Yesterday we drove the 6 hours from Rotorua to Wellington, with a pit stop at Huka Falls. The falls were quite impressive – water getting squeezed from a normally 100 meter wide river, to a 20 meter wide gorge with an 11 meter drop. It is the most visited waterfall in NZ!

The drive went from beautiful lake country for the first couple of hours, to high dessert for the next 3 hours until we neared the ocean on the west side. Most people find the drive a bit boring, but I was enjoying the wide open views, rolling hills with a smattering of windy little gorges every now and then. It was actually very scenic – at least this first time!

We are staying 2 nites at City View motel – free parking (rare in Wellington), free wifi, large clean rooms, and 1 block from Cuba Street with tons of restaurants and shopping. Only down side is it’s a bit of an uphill walk at the end of the day to get back to the room. But all the better to wear that tasty dinner off! We had an excellent meal last night at Istanbul restaurant – and it was 2 for 1 nite! On the meals – not on the drinks. And the food was great and plentiful – would definitely go back again.

We managed to fill the entire day up today. Imagine that? All do to fine planning by yours truly… Anyway – John kept up very well. Very few moans and groans, at least until the final few blocks back to the room. We started out with a cable car ride to the top of a hill where a cable car museum, an observatory, and the botanical gardens reside. The view was terrific and not a cloud in the sky. We made our way through the cable car museum (it was free), and we learned (and what I thought was pretty cool) is that there are many private homes throughout Wellington with their own private cable cars – since so many of the homes are built on the side of such steep hills around the city. They had a couple of restored cable cars on display that were pretty cool. And we also learned something about winding gears and pulley systems, but I think John retained a bit more of that than I did. We did a short walk about the gardens and observatory then took the cable car back down the hill and made our way to the government buildings.

Wellington is the national capital of New Zealand, and has some very cool looking government buildings. One is the Bee Hive, which currently houses the executive wing, and really resembles a bee hive! And then there is the Old Government Building, which is the largest wooden building in the southern hemisphere – it is very impressive. There was lots of activity outside the capital today – including a pro-cannabis protest (if that makes any sense?) with a few protesters marching (or more accurately – chillin out) on the steps of the capital. I wanted to talk to them about some other options, such as moving to Washington State, but John thought it better not to get too involved. So off we went for some more site seeing.

We visited a really beautiful, old, wooden church – St. Paul’s cathedral – right in the middle of downtown. We got a great tasting beer at the Thistle Inn (built no later than 1840!). And we went to Te Papa – the national museum of New Zealand (it was also free). What an impressive museum – really well done. It was a bit late in the afternoon by the time we made our way there – so our dogs were barking. So we weren’t able to dig deep into every part of the museum – but we touched on each area to some level. It definitely is worth the better part of a day. We noticed there is not much for marinas in the immediate downtown area – which surprised us. We thought there would be more with all the water everywhere. The finale of the day was a ride on bus route Number 14 – taking us on a ride around the most scenic parts of the city – beautiful views and houses. We eventually found a bus to take us back to city center, had a nice dinner at an Irish pub on Cuba street, and then back to the room to pack and relax a bit.

Tomorrow is the ferry ride to Picton. We are going to try and head straight down to Christchurch to begin our south island tour. We figure if there is time left over, then we will explore out the northern end of the South Island.

Now to pick through and pick out the best of the pics from today – see the picture gallery for the latest.

Lisa