New Zealand (2011)

Mar 122011

Wellington & the Pucton Ferry

It took about two days for the hairs in our nostrils to burn out so we decided it was time to leave Rotorua and continue heading south. We only had a couple of days to get ourselves to Wellington on the southern tip of the north island.

Roturua is on a huge lake. But that lake is tiny in comparison to Lake Taupo. With a surface area of over 600 km2, it’s a bit daunting to realise that it is in fact, the top of a huge supervolcano. And not an extinct supervolcano, either. We pulled up for a while and took in the views, finding it a stunning location (despite my managing to sit myself down in a big wad of duck poo).

We kept on heading south until we got to Palmerston North. Where we stopped.

Palmerston North is quite a big town in the scheme of things. It is famous for . . . errr . . .

Apparently the city has a slogan of “Young Heart, Easy Living”. It probably would be a more interesting place if the slogan was “Easy Young. Living Heart.”

But we stayed there overnight and did have quite a lovely meal at Bethany’s Restaurant right in the square.

And still we headed south through town after town with far too many vowels in their names until we finally reached Wellington (which could probably do with one or two more).

Now, isn’t Wellington nice?

It’s the kind of place that makes San Francisco seem like it’s built on a plateau. Lots of steep hills, a busy but still attractive harbour, lots of sunshine (at least while we were there) and a vibrant music and restaurant scene.

We explored a few of the eateries around the harbour-side tourist trap area which is surprisingly not nearly as lame as the harbour-side tourist trap area in Sydney. Granted, that’s not setting the bar very high, but Wellington is quite pleasant.

We spend a wonderful evening enjoying more of the local produce as the sun set over Wellington Harbour. On the other side of the harbour we could see the steady stream of army heavy aircraft taking off from Wellington airport, ferrying the essentials to Christchurch 400km to our south.