An early scramble out of the house to catch the bus to Wellington, the weather is a little grisly and the route not so scenic as the last trip but this allows us to catch a little sleep without missing too much. The seven hour trip allows us to glimpse the many fields and green hills that litter the countryside. A lunch stop in Palmerston North allows David to fulfill his lifelong (since Rotorua) dream of eating in a Pita Pit, we know we’ve made the right choice when several of the other bus passengers pick it as ‘the old reliable’.
Back on the bus and not so hungry, we can appreciate the journey a little more.
The bus rumbles into Wellington, the weather has turned and its beautiful. Before getting off the bus its lovely and sunny and the water looks like a beautiful coloured glass. Once off the bus we realise why Wellington is famous for being windy. Its cold. Like chillingly cold. And all I’m thinking as this cold wind blasts through me is David’s words ‘its gonna be the coldest on the South Island’. Is that possible.
We check into our hostel which we booked so long ago that we had forgotten that we booked this place because it had free pancakes for breakfast and a free dinner too. Living the dream. And honestly I thought it would be the greatest hostel ever, except that at night we seemed to be plagued by a herd of elephants in the floor above whose hobbies seemed to include tap dancing, musical bumps and of course, the local’s favourite rugby. This constant stream of bumps and thuds played on throughout the night, making the vegetable pie and the promise of pancakes seem like a distant memory. I slept a little and David slept less.
Having grabbed a little leaflet the night before we have a vague idea of the things we want to cram into our mere two days in the capital we set off early after some slightly embarrassing pancakes that I’ve had to cook between two French groups who make it look like they’ve just put a slice of toast in the toaster. Bastards.
We head off across the town to catch the cable car up to the Botanic Gardens, I’m a little disappointed cos I was hoping it was one of the skyliner-y type things, instead its more of a tram or funicular with this funky light show in the tunnels up which ascends a steep hill that I’m grateful not to be climbing up.
We reach the top, theres only two other stops and the track isn’t long. At this terminus stop a gentleman asks the driver if the next stop is where the Botanic Garden is. It isn’t, its this stop and the track ends but we walk away and avoid the ensuing confusion. The gardens are really lovely and even for the capital it seems once more as if we might be on our own. We lose our way a couple of times but manage to stumble on to the best bits of the gardens. The first is an extinction garden, this is a garden full of plants that you will struggle to find growing on their own in the big wild world. The second is the peace flame. Now this is beautiful, if a little hard to discern at first. This garden was created as part of the promise to clear nuclear weapons from New Zealand. Inside a little stone lantern is the flame that burns to keep that promise.
Getting away from the beautiful in the political sense as well as the scenic we then climb up the bloody steep hill (the reason we got the cable car) to walk back to the top to return down the hill in the cable car… Makes sense I guess. David probably engineered this so I could walk of Jennie’s brownies. Bastard.
I suggest that we do this trail called the Southern walkway, it’s supposed to take you up to Mount Victoria and potentially see more Lord of the Rings based locations. It does not disappoint, aside from the unrelenting wind that Wellington is famed for, which actually relents a little, we walk alongside the waterfront to find the trail that leads up. On the way we see a few houses which actually have their own funiculars to access the house themself or their gardens. Honestly I couldn’t tell if this was genius or laziness, but as we started to ascend I realised it was pure necessity.
We eat lunch halfway up because I’m starving as well as struggling with the pure uphillness of it all. I claim its cos the view is so nice and it’ll be windier at the top. I was right on that. We get to the top and a girl has got out of her car just to ditch her Maccies bag before racing back to the haven of warmth. The view is lovely though but I don’t waste my time on that, I spend the majority of the time at the summit googling which filming locations are in walking distance. Turns out we are about five minutes from one. A good one too.
On my directions it tells me exactly how to get to the GET OFF THE ROAD QUICK sequence. It even tells me which trees I should be looking at and that if I wanna get real specific I should ask a local. We traipse down past alien abduction warning signs as well as a couple of benches which pay tribute to this iconic trilogy.
We find the spot and even though there’s been very few people throughout the trail at our moment of need a local happens to walk past and ask if we are looking for ‘the hobbit stuff’. He shows us exact points and which shot is from where and honestly did Gandalf send him cos he is incredible. After our helpful local wanders a safe distance off we start divvying up who is gonna reenact Frodo’s famous line. My argument that I’ve already embarrassed myself at Hobbiton doing Bilbo impressions falls on deaf ears as David says he did his Gollum impression at Te Mata. Which, I counter, no one asked him to do and he didn’t have a whole tour group egging him on… but apparently my whole personality is formed around my identity as a Hobbit, so its gonna be me and after all the criticisms of my performance that I got, I can’t believe I fell for that line.
We head back towards Wellington and decide to visit Te Papa the national museum. We could definitely have spent our full two days exploring each exhibit but we are limited to just two afternoons. We start with the nature exhibit and its such a clever and cool museum. They have the interactivity of the exhibits mastered, with enough engagement that the kids, David and I are all competing to see how volcanoes erupt, how to fish sustainably and how to tsunamis happen.
Te Papa nature gallipoli
next day
Weta
fish and chips
te papa part two
Denny and Debbie's Little Big Adventure 