April 2

Awoke  to overcast skies and rain.  Breakfast at the hotel and the take the bus for city sights.  Wellington is the capital and is built on a series of hills backed by mountains around a natural volcanic harbor.  It lies between two of the world’s most active fault lines.  Their building code has required that all buildings be reinforced with many on new technology of movable discs underground.  First stop is the Cable car museum and the station for the cable cars.  The museum is very nice and the views from this high point are very nice even though the clouds hang low.  Much like San Fran there are old Victorian houses sitting close together perched up and down the hills.  The vegetation is lush with lots of ferns and hotter climate trees mixed in with hard woods especially big cypress and given the amount of moss it looks to be a wet climate.  We stop at Lady Norwood’s Garden that has a planned rose garden of all varieties, greenhouse, etc.  The hills above us are full of low hanging cloud into the trees.  Next stop are their government buildings.  Auckland was the capital at one time but moved to Wellington to be more representative of the whole country.  The buildings range from the Prime Minister’s ‘beehive’ modern to old style Georgian architecture.  This area also has two large universities.  Victoria Uni is mixed into the government area.  We pass by waterfront, part working fleet and shipping and part recreational.  The primary areas and their various activities are pointed out.  It’s not a hard city to navigate.  We are dropped off at NZ version of the Smithsonian, Te Papa.  A beautiful new facility with state of the art interactive displays.  Everything from flora and fauna to earthquake and volcano activity and a huge display of the Maori culture.  There is an outdoor bushwalk complete with swinging rope bridge and waterfalls.  Much like the parliament building in Edinburgh where all signage was in English and Gaelic, Te Papa signage is English and Maori, even the no smoking signs.  The Maoris have been here for less than 1000 years.  The Treaty with the English was done badly and they are still fighting for their right even today.  Their culture has so many similarities with Alaska and Hawaiians it’s hard not to see it.  It is the style here for young men, not just Maori, to wear their hair in ‘man buns’.  And the tattoos that we have seen in Ak native and those of the Maori are very similar.  Tatoos have expanded in all societies today.  Their craft is in wood, grass weaving, use of jadite or nephrite like Ak and Pukoa shells.  They have been a very physically violent culture in war; women are revered and men who were captured were eaten.  They still take warrior training but they are not cannibals.  We choose to walk back in our own time so we continue on walking by the harbor.  There is a festival going on and a huge local craft market.  Food trucks are lined up to serve, nothing too different from home.  There is live music.  We enter the market that is underground and see very interesting items, all NZ made.  We find a Maori owned craft store and find out it is only one of two in all of Wellington.  The storekeeper is a Samoan woman who is married to a Maori man.  She talked about his family and warrior training he had to go through.  He and his parents own the store.  The woman we met makes pukoa shell necklaces.  They are so reasonable we buy two!  And we have met the artist.  Along our walk a Scottish piper is playing in full kilt.  Lots of people all around, many young and single.  There are sail boats, kayakers, rowers and boogey boards in the harbor.  The rain has stopped and the clouds are lifting.  We find a restaurant called Shed 5, it looks like a crab shack kind of place with wood siding.  Inside it’s linen table cloths etc but we felt very welcome.  The barman let us sample various NZ craft beers and found an IPA by Emerson that we really liked.  We took advantage of their 2 dozen for the price of one fresh oyster special. Not just any oysters but Bluff oysters from the bottom of the south island, very cold water.  These are not farmed but grow in the sand. They are huge, fresh and very rich.  We sit by the water and they let us open the window for the breeze.  Walked over to the old Railway Station, still used for passenger trains.  Not as ornate as other stations we have been in but reminded us so much of Great Britain.  Walked over to the Benchwarmers Pub located across the street from the parliament buildings.  This pub is frequented by the government gang.  There are life size puppets (caricatures) of various govt. officials.  A short walk to the oldest pub in NZ (with continuous license to sell), the Thistle Inn. They have kept the outside intact and done some modernization inside.  Many pictures of its history are on the wall, an original wall has been maintained and a Plexiglas panel in the floor shows the original cellar and foundation, still being used.  The barman lets us sample some of the NZ beers, we like Cassell’s PA.  Walk back to the hotel and see a movie camera in operation with a chase scene between a Mini Cooper and Police cars right there on a main street.  There are uni students everywhere.  It’s Saturday and they are out for a good time.  We take the cable car up to the view point we were at this morning.  The clouds have cleared for a very good view over the city and out over the harbor.  The cable car goes through tunnels that have light displays inside.  We walk over to the Botanical gardens and see the various observatories.  There is a very nice center with a planetarium but we’re too tired to stay.  Back down the cable car and dinner at the hotel since it is the easiest.  The hotel is built on the side of the hill so we can take the elevator from the lower street up to the hotel.  Need to repack and get ready for tomorrow.  We go to Roturua and will be staying overnight with one other couple at a local family home.  Can’t take all our bags, the tour will handle everything and we can just take an overnight bag.  Time for bed!

April 1 April Fool’s Day

Awoke to overcast skies, cool temps.  Breakfast at the hotel and then taking the bus north along the coastline. We stop at the little tourist seaside town of Kaikoura where we walk to the beach for a view of the South Pacific Ocean.  Skies are overcast and the surf is mild.  The beaches along this route are all lines with large stone and stone grit.  The large glaciers fed this area and the glacial rivers still influence with dropping rock.  A quick walk around the small shops and back to the bus.  The road curves frequently as we hug the side of the mountains at sea level.  We’re sharing this narrow space with railroad tracks and there are frequent short tunnels we must go through.  The coastline is dramatic with the mountains so close.  We see dolphins and the occasional seal.  But then we come upon the seal birthing sanctuary and see up close hundreds of female seals and their pups.  The pups playing in their little pools and squawking at their mothers for food.  We drive through the large grape growing region of Marlborough.  We have had wines from here and they are always very good, usually the reds.  The region does so well there are French wineries that grow and produce from here as well.  The harvest is next month and the vines are all covered with nets to keep birds out.  We arrive at the petty little town of Picton where we catch the ferry to Wellington.  The top of south island is full of inlets and coves.  There is likely a more direct route for the ferry but Picton would probably disappear without it.  We leave the bus and walk onto the ferry.  It is the size of a small cruise ship.  They are loading buses, large semi’s, camping RV’s and trailers, and four double decker semi’s with sheep and cattle.  We are able to look down at the animals from above, they have opened their roofs for air.  They look pretty miserable, makes us sad to think of them as steaks, burgers and chops so we avoid the area.  There are cafes and bars and entertainment systems on board for those who want it.  The first part of the trip goes through a narrow inlet of low elevation tree covered mountains with little coves along the way.  Reminds us much of the Alaska inside passage.  Then we enter the Marlborough Sound where the Tasman Sea from the west meets the South Pacific Ocean on the east.  Our tour has taken us to the Tasman Sea (between Tasmania and Australia) and onto the South Pacific Ocean (Australia’s east coast).  The crossing can be hairy with the meeting of these two waters in confined space and as always there is the two great world fault lines are running right under us.  Wellington had such a large quake 100 years ago it lifted the city three inches above sea level.  We are entering the harbor at Wellington the capital.  The houses hang on rolling hills much like San Fran.  The cityscape sits on the only flat land at the bottom.  NZ had 4.5 million people most living on North Island in Wellington or Auckland.  We board the bus on while on the ferry, it’s quite an experience being among all these big vehicles below sea level. To our Novotel hotel in the heart of the city.  We go to our very nice room.  We think we’ve ditched the other tour groups so we seem to have it to ourselves.  Dinner is served individually from a condensed menu and it’s very good but the service is slow.  Enjoyable conversation with other guests.  Up to early bed, we have been on the road for the past 12 hours and it was great but tiring.

March 31

Awake to a brilliant sunrise over Mt. Cook. Forecast at Information Center last night called for rain, maybe later after we’re gone. Bags out and ready to roll by 8:30 for today we leave the mountainous area and drive to Christchurch which was heavily damaged over the past 10 years ago by big earthquakes that were centered under the town and only 6km deep.  The first part of our journey takes us back over the same road that took us into the park yesterday following Lake Hawea.  We enter the foot hills of the Southern Alps. This is what NZ calls their continental divide mountains that range from north to south.  Many ranges make up the Alps like the Remarkables in Oueensland.  This area has all kinds of farming but it requires a lot of irrigation or nothing would grow here.  Stopped at Omarama for a brief coffee break and looked around at a local antique and collectable store where they have a road sign from Seward Alaska.  Drove by another large glacier lake for hydro power Lake Pukaki.  Stopped briefly at Lake Tekapo, another dammed lake for power, the town is brand new and sprung up with holiday cottages.  The tiny old stone Church of the Shepherd sits on an outcropping with windows looking over the lake and mountains.  Nearby is a statue of a sheep dog, giving tribute to their work.  There are two kinds of dogs, one that stars down the sheep and another that barks at them.  We have entered beautiful low rolling green hills, looks like England or Amish country in Ohio.  There are no barns for stock, they are never inside. Stopped at the cute old town of Geraldine, primarily a center for the farming community.  We see the Guinness Book of records largest knitted sweater and old time butcher.  A meat pie and sausage roll give us sustenance to move on. We are passing through the Canterbury Plains, the largest area of flat land in NZ.  Crops and stock are the main stay here. We finally see railroad tracks, seems to be used to move product and not people and is limited in location.  Settler farmers installed huge hedge rows that border the properties, cut flat on one side with a special industrial trimmer.  They are being cut as newer dairy industry wants them gone.  We enter Christ Church and the outskirts looks like any other city, many locals are building houses out here because the land is supposed to be more stable.  We stop at the Canterbury Museum with an exterior that looks like Tudor England.  This building does not seem to have suffered too much damage but we start to see the buildings around us have.  The Museum is stuffed with all sorts of memorabilia from old Christ Church, artifacts from Maori’s, science center and lots on Antarctica expeditions.  Next door is the very beautiful Royal Botanical Gardens.  Lots of ‘old fashioned’ flowers and roses, all profuse.  Beautiful visitor center and café, fountains and follies.  But what is most notable are the trees.  This trip has shown us a great variety of trees but their size and shapes of their trunks and i canopies are eye popping.  Some are indigenous and others have been imported and they like it here.  There are American sequoias that seem to touch the skies and the cedars are always majestic.  We have come far enough north that we are seeing palm trees and eucalyptus trees again, part of the native plants growing here.  We watched a news show that was all in Maori language with English subtitles. They are much more assertive than the Aboriginals in Aus. They were cannibalistic when it came to defeated male warriors.  We have been assured we are in not danger these days. They are Polynesian in origin showing in their physical traits and arts.  Very handsome people by conventional standards, built stockier than ABs.  And it seems they have not been in NZ for very long, hundreds of years instead of the Abs 40,000 years. Christ Church sits on very unstable ground with a couple shallow fault lines.  They have access to the South Pacific Ocean as they are on the east coast.  The wind here has a chill, they are in autumn.  Our hotel, the Rendezvous, is in the center of town.  The hotel we would normally have stayed at is boarded up from damage.  All around us are bit lots where the buildings have been taken down or lots with new building or lots with boarded up buildings.  We walk by the famous Christ Church Cathedral, lots of stone, stained glass and slate roof.  It looks like a bomb was dropped on it.  There is a huge disagreement about what to do with it so there it stands in horrific splendor.  Stop at the Hermitage Hotel, an historic Government House building that has been transformed.  Very beautiful, we stop for a drink and the waitress tells us they had done a restructure prior to the quakes so they came through well with little damage.  Even the basement pool had no cracks.  We stay for pinot noir and a dozen local oysters.  Back to the hotel for dinner by ourselves.  Interesting meal, starting with boiled seasoned peanuts, very good!  Leaving the south island tomorrow via ferry to the capital, Wellington. It was a good decision to fly Australia and bus through New Zealand.  So glad we’re not on a plane every other day.  By the time we end this 2 month trip we will have been on 16 flights and 8 times on the water (not knowing yet what return to Hawaii will bring.  And miles and miles on buses.