Wellington, New Zealand

Kia ora!

That's how they say hi or g'day in New Zealand.   I arrived in Wellington on Air New Zealand  (NZ$219/3 hour flight and add 2 hours time difference).  Americans don't have to have a visa.  They just need to have a return ticket so I'm leaving from Auckland after a 7 week stay.  I need to be in Cairns, Queensland, Australia to meet daughter Stephanie around May 25.  The cheapest fare to Cairns was from Auckland (NZ's busiest airport/most flexibility) on May 17th.  That's how I make my decisions these days.  Scary isn't it?  I flew into Wellington because flights into Christchurch (second busiest airport) are heavily discouraged. 

I stayed at Wellywood Backpackers ($24/10 bed).  They had free internet but the connection wasn't very good in the room.   Although there were no amenities like bed shelves, lamps, or lockers, the room was  very large with 3 sets of bunks and 4 single beds.  I was in the last (single) bed the first night (I checked in at 1 am) but switched the next night to a bottom bunk in the back corner.  It was more private (especially when you hang a towel from the upper bedrail) and the upper bunks were way high up so that there was heaps of headroom below.  Most nights there were only 6-8 people in the room.  Two of the guys (Spanish) had been there for a month while looking for a rental.  Everyone is pretty respectful of others' space and most seemed to try to be reasonable about noise especially when others seemed to be sleeping.   I haven't had anyone pee or puke or even be overly loud despite the horror stories I've heard.

Most of the people I've met in the hostels have been in their 20s.  Then the younger set and the lower 30s.  Only a scattering of "older" guests and even fewer "older" couples or families.  Most people exchange info such as nationality, how long they're traveling, where they've been/going to and their favorite places.  Most people are curious about my travelling alone for a year.  When I tell them that my kids are in Uni(versity) and they are taken care of (they are sorted, in most languages), usually they are admiring probably because they can't see their mums doing this. 

Wellington is very much like San Francisco.  It's on a bay/harbour, got heaps of hills, located on a fault, mild weather year-round, and tourism is a major industry.  Although SF is considered a small city, Wellington, NZ's capital, is really small.  Conveniently, many of the sites in which tourists would be interested are within 500 meters of the harbor and on the flats.  The waterfront (1.5 - 2 km or about a mile) is nicely developed with ferry, bus, and railroad terminals very close to Parliament near one end of the city center and parks, shopping precincts, galleries, and museums scattered through to the other end. 

NZ has 4.5 million people and 40 million sheep

The southern end of the CBD, anchored by Courtenay Place and Cuba Street is more backpacker oriented while the northern end around Lambton Quay has the designer and other upscale shops.  On a nice day office workers and tourists are everywhere, picnicking on benches and grassy islands on the wider footpaths (sidewalks).  BTW, even the most touristy places I've seen (Melbourne and parts of Sydney) do not come off as sleazy as SF's Fisherman's Wharf.

Wellington also has a cable car.  One cable car that just goes up and down one steep hill ($3.50 one way/$6 (round trip) return).  It goes up to the Carter and other Observatories, the Cable Car Museum, and the top end of the Wellington Royal Botanic Gardens.  There's also a Wellington City Sights tour bus that does a one-hour loop ($30/48 hours) as well as their Metlink bus system (fares based on zones or $9/day pass). 

$52 bucks for Frodo ears!!

Tourists can find lots of free things to do.  The very best thing to do in Welly is the Te Papa Museum, NZ's national museum.  It is an awesome place and takes hours to go through; I divvied it up into 3 days.  I enjoyed the extensive exhibits about the Maoris, the earthquake exhibits and the Bush City exhibit.  I'm a sucker for interactive exhibits, especially ones where you can go over bridges and stepping stone paths and touch and feel stuff, etc. The City and Sea Museum also has good exhibits and is worth a visit.  If you're into collectibles or into Lord of the Rings (or King Kong, Station 9, Narnia, The Water Horse, etc), Weta Cave is a mini museum about the artists and art of costumes, make-up, props, scenery, and computer animation in movie making.  I thought it was okay and a good excuse to take a bus out of the city center; if we got an actual tour of their facilities instead of a 20 minute DVD movie, it would have been better.  But can you imagine the security since they're currently working on The Hobbit movie? 

Succulent slope at Botanical Gardens

One of the most popular tours is the Lord of the Rings Tour that takes you to sites where the movies where filmed.  Other "top attractions" I didn't go to were the Wellington Zoo and Zealandia, an animal sanctuary.  Instead I went to the Botanical Gardens and the Otari-Wilton Native Botanic Garden and Forest Reserve (both free).  The Botanical Gardens are reasonable with almost adequate signage and a nice Treehouse visitor/interpretive center.  The extensive gardens are on a very steep incline.  If I had a wheelchair, my brakes would be worn out by the time I got down to the main gardens.  But it had excellent examples of hillside planting!   I liked their Succulents and Rock Gardens and the Sculpture Walk.

A grove of small Pseudopanax ferox

Even better, however, is the Otari-Wilton Garden/Reserve.  I took a couple of hours to do the Nature and Circular Walks.  Whilst I'm familiar with a few genera of plants that are native to NZ, I enjoyed seeing many new ones (Pseudopanax, Agathis australis, Macropiper).   Although there are garden designers that stick to natives, I believe in using plants that are well-suited to the soil and microclimate as long as they are known to not readily self-sow and are non-invasive.  Many species of Phormium (NZ flax), Metrosideros (NZ Christmas tree-rata), Leptospermum (NZ tea tree-manuka), Dicksonia (NZ tree fern), Pittosporum (ake ake), Coprosma (mirror plant), Corokia, and Hebe do very well in California.

The City Sights tourbus and Metlink buses enabled me to discover areas outside the CBD.  Newtown is a neighborhood with a large CBD with a mixture of ethnic eateries and shops and at least one Asian (much larger than the one in the  CBD) and one Mediterranean supermarkets.  Although there apparently is a good sized Chinese population in New Zealand, according to museum exhibits, I have seen very few Asians besides those working in Asian businesses or tourists.

I've had some nice adventures.  I'll tell you more next time.

Cheers!

Cyn