Part 2 of Spring Break: the Capital, LOTR and Dolphin Swimming!
< This week I have finally posted the pictures from the second half of my trip back in late April. My apologies for taking so long. I have had essays and assignments galore these last few weeks. But, I am home free for now....until exams begin on June 7th.
On this part of the trip, it was just me and my two female flatmates, Jenn and Kim. We had about a week in addition to the week we spent on the West Coast (so Yes, I did skip a week of class to do this portion of the trip.....can you blame me?). There was no way we could do all of the North Island, so we decided just to visit the capital of New Zealand, Wellington. We flew there from Dunedin, which was about an hour long. Once we landed, we took a cab to the Botanical Gardens in Wellington. Lucky for us, our cab driver was all too excited to tell us everything he knew about Lord of the Rings (LOTR). I'm honestly not being sarcastic. It was kind of neat to see where certain scenes were shot. He also pointed out the ship that was used in King Kong, which was parked in Wellington's harbour. My first impression of Wellington was very positive. I have decided it is my favourite city in New Zealand so far. Not too big and not too small.
We arrived at the Botanical Gardens, walked around and then took the trolley back down to the city. Wellington is ridiculously hilly, so we were getting quite the workout trekking to our backpackers. Once we got there, we settled in and head downtown for some browsing and food. There is this really colourful and artsy part of downtown known as Cuba Street. It is built so that no cars can actually travel down this road. It is very pedestrian friendly. Really neat concept and lots of cool stores. The following day we got up nice and early to grab breakfast at a bagel shop (note: it is very difficult to find bagels anywhere in NZ). Then, we made our way over to the famous Te Papa museum, which is the largest museum in NZ. It also had a LOTR exhibit when we went. Kim, my roommate is obsessed with Peter Jackson and LOTR so she was pretty happy about this. We got some great pictures of maraes, which are the traditional meeting houses/habitats of Maori. They are really beautiful. Apparently, the Beatles visited a marae when they came to NZ many years ago as you will see in my pictures below.
As I said before, Kim is a huge Peter Jackson fan, so she even tracked down where his private studio was in Wellington. So, after the museum, we took a bus all the way into a suburb on the outskirts of town and walked around aimlessly for a while until we found WETA studios, the name of Jackson's company. You will notice below it does not look like what you would expect a studio to look like. It looks like a simple house actually. But, it is actually rather big, especially around the back. But I suppose they would want to be pretty discrete about things considering Jackson's success. Anyways, Kim is a bit shyer, so she was content with just taking pictures of the exterior, but I didn't go all the way to NZ to stand outside his studio. So, we knocked on the locked doors outside the studio and the receptionist let us in. I pretty much told her we were huge fans of Jackson's and asked if we could simply stand in the lobby. She said that was fine but that was pretty much all we could do. There were some statues of Jackson's movie characters (i.e. smeagel) so we took photos with them as you will see below. So, once we were all good and done being nerds, we left.
The next day we head back to the South Island on a ferry. This ferry ride is comparable to the ferry crossing between Vancouver Island and Mainland back home. It can hold about 400 cars and has a couple resturants on board. The only difference between this and the ferry back home was that it was twice as long: 3 hours. So, I attempted to sleep on the uncomfortable seats (proof below). When we got to the South Island, we made our way to the city of Nelson which is where we stayed for 3 days. The first evening, we met up with Laurie, Karla and Meredith (fellow Toroa residents) and had dinner together. The next morning, we head to the craft market Nelson has every weekend. After walking around the small town of Nelson, me and the ladies decided to just have a relaxing evening at the backpackers. Now, we don't expect high quality accommodations at a backpackers, however this place was the dumps. It was called Paradiso because they offered a pool and sauna, but everything else was subpar. The bathrooms were not cleaned (even after someone threw up all over the toilet the night we arrived). It was pretty loud during the evenings and the triple room we were given was the size of my single room back at my dorm. Needless to say, we were very unhappy with our backpackers experience in Nelson.
The last day in Nelson, we paid for a cruise through Abel Tasman in the very North of the South Island. After the cruise, we set out on a 3 hour tramp. The views were breathtaking even in the rain (as you'll see below). This lasted the entire day. The next day, we took a bus towards to Kaikoura, which is where a lot of the water related activities occur. The first day, we took a tour through a Maori leap cave with a very animated tour guide. He kept pointing out certain stalacmites/tites in the cave and telling us they looked like certain objects and people. For example, one of them looked like Queen Elizabeth II and another like Henry VIII. I think he spent too much time in the cave.
Next, we head out to the Seal colony, which was really neat. The seals were just lying around sleeping not really paying much attention to us. We got some good pictures from that. The highlight of the trip though was the following day: dolphin swimming! Before we suited up, the guides told us there was a rather large seasick warning because of the storm and asked if we were still up for it? I said yes, of course. So, Jenn and I suited up. Kim was just a spectator for this activity. We watched a video first where we were advised to not touch the dolphins. They also gave us tips on how to interact with them. For example, we were told to make dolphin-ish noises. Kim can vouch for how hilarious we looked doing this. We were also told to swim like a dolphin (lots of diving) and circle them (kind of like playing tag with them). So after the video, we set off on the bus. Then we got onto a boat and head out to sea. The average searching time to sight a pod of dolphins is 20-30min. We searched for 45 minutes and still nothing! So, we were told that we were going to head back but that we would be getting most of our money back. I was pretty disappointed though. But then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a pod of 300-400 dolphins appeared! It was magical. So, we got our hoods and masks on and jumped in. There were so many of them. I was nudged by a few and got to play tag with one as well. They are such beautiful creatures. I had my waterproof camera with me, so I got some really neat up close pictures. Kim took a few good ones of them jumping out of the water as you'll see below. So, what started out as a pretty disappointing day ended as an exhilarating experience. After the swim, we head back to town, where many shops were not opened yet because it happened to be Anzac Day in New Zealand (April 24). This is similar to Remembrance Day in Canada, but NZ shares it with Australia hence the ANZ.
Another interesting backpacker story. We stayed at a place called Sunrise Lodge Backpackers in Kaikoura. This place was suggested by my trusty Lonely Planet guide. The LP interpretation was that it was kind of a hippy-esque place with really friendly animal-loving personable owners. Sure enough, when we first arrived into town at the info centre, the lovely owners came to pick us up in their 20+ year old van. They were a really nice elderly couple who chatted us up. When we checked in, we asked for the keys and that's when they told us that they don't believe in keys and they leave doors unlocked and open most of the time. I thought this was interesting, but manageable. The girls and I figured out that we can lock/unlock the doors with a coin, so that's what we did while we stayed there. However, all the other guests were really friendly, so we really did have nothing to worry about. We has a pretty good experience there overall. However, the cherry on top to LP's description came when the owner ran into the living area where the other guests and I were sitting and shouted "Who wants to come save an injured animal with me right now?" One of the guests jumped to the challenge and they ran off into his "Rescue Animal" van and took off. It was really quite entertaining and of course admirable to see.
For the last portion of the trip, we head to Chrischurch. CC is the second largest city in NZ next to Auckland. We went to an Art gallery, craft fair and Maori show while there. The Maori experience as they called it was very cool. We saw some traditional dances and even atempted some ourselves as you will see below. After the show, we were served a buffet dinner with some traditionally cooked dishes. There is a certain way that Maori cook there meat and vegetables. It is within the ground and results in almost a steamed taste. Very good. After dinner, we took a tour in a wildlife reserve of the nocturnal animals. Probably the most famous one is the Kiwi bird. These are flightless, wingless birds with very sensitive eyes. So unfortunately we could not take any flash photos of them. They are very very cute though. The sad thing we learned was that only about 2% of them survive in the wild because of the many rodents (i.e. possums and ferrets) that were brought over to NZ. So there are many attempts to save them right now.
Finally, we made our way back to Dunedin eventually. The bus ride was supposed to be 5 hours, however it turned out to be longer because unbeknownst to us, there was a flood in Dunedin while we were gone (because of the rain) and thus, one of the bridges on the main highway near Dunedin collapsed. The driver told us it was going to be an extra 5 hour wait, so we had to get comfortable. Fortunately the maintenance workers got it up and running in less than an hour and we made it home by midnight. What a way to finish the trip. I realized just how limited NZ really is sometimes because there was no alternative route at all. There is only one highway/road/route between 2 of the largest cities in NZ. However, we managed and I have no complaints....for now :)
Hope you enjoyed this post!
On this part of the trip, it was just me and my two female flatmates, Jenn and Kim. We had about a week in addition to the week we spent on the West Coast (so Yes, I did skip a week of class to do this portion of the trip.....can you blame me?). There was no way we could do all of the North Island, so we decided just to visit the capital of New Zealand, Wellington. We flew there from Dunedin, which was about an hour long. Once we landed, we took a cab to the Botanical Gardens in Wellington. Lucky for us, our cab driver was all too excited to tell us everything he knew about Lord of the Rings (LOTR). I'm honestly not being sarcastic. It was kind of neat to see where certain scenes were shot. He also pointed out the ship that was used in King Kong, which was parked in Wellington's harbour. My first impression of Wellington was very positive. I have decided it is my favourite city in New Zealand so far. Not too big and not too small.
We arrived at the Botanical Gardens, walked around and then took the trolley back down to the city. Wellington is ridiculously hilly, so we were getting quite the workout trekking to our backpackers. Once we got there, we settled in and head downtown for some browsing and food. There is this really colourful and artsy part of downtown known as Cuba Street. It is built so that no cars can actually travel down this road. It is very pedestrian friendly. Really neat concept and lots of cool stores. The following day we got up nice and early to grab breakfast at a bagel shop (note: it is very difficult to find bagels anywhere in NZ). Then, we made our way over to the famous Te Papa museum, which is the largest museum in NZ. It also had a LOTR exhibit when we went. Kim, my roommate is obsessed with Peter Jackson and LOTR so she was pretty happy about this. We got some great pictures of maraes, which are the traditional meeting houses/habitats of Maori. They are really beautiful. Apparently, the Beatles visited a marae when they came to NZ many years ago as you will see in my pictures below.
As I said before, Kim is a huge Peter Jackson fan, so she even tracked down where his private studio was in Wellington. So, after the museum, we took a bus all the way into a suburb on the outskirts of town and walked around aimlessly for a while until we found WETA studios, the name of Jackson's company. You will notice below it does not look like what you would expect a studio to look like. It looks like a simple house actually. But, it is actually rather big, especially around the back. But I suppose they would want to be pretty discrete about things considering Jackson's success. Anyways, Kim is a bit shyer, so she was content with just taking pictures of the exterior, but I didn't go all the way to NZ to stand outside his studio. So, we knocked on the locked doors outside the studio and the receptionist let us in. I pretty much told her we were huge fans of Jackson's and asked if we could simply stand in the lobby. She said that was fine but that was pretty much all we could do. There were some statues of Jackson's movie characters (i.e. smeagel) so we took photos with them as you will see below. So, once we were all good and done being nerds, we left.
The next day we head back to the South Island on a ferry. This ferry ride is comparable to the ferry crossing between Vancouver Island and Mainland back home. It can hold about 400 cars and has a couple resturants on board. The only difference between this and the ferry back home was that it was twice as long: 3 hours. So, I attempted to sleep on the uncomfortable seats (proof below). When we got to the South Island, we made our way to the city of Nelson which is where we stayed for 3 days. The first evening, we met up with Laurie, Karla and Meredith (fellow Toroa residents) and had dinner together. The next morning, we head to the craft market Nelson has every weekend. After walking around the small town of Nelson, me and the ladies decided to just have a relaxing evening at the backpackers. Now, we don't expect high quality accommodations at a backpackers, however this place was the dumps. It was called Paradiso because they offered a pool and sauna, but everything else was subpar. The bathrooms were not cleaned (even after someone threw up all over the toilet the night we arrived). It was pretty loud during the evenings and the triple room we were given was the size of my single room back at my dorm. Needless to say, we were very unhappy with our backpackers experience in Nelson.
The last day in Nelson, we paid for a cruise through Abel Tasman in the very North of the South Island. After the cruise, we set out on a 3 hour tramp. The views were breathtaking even in the rain (as you'll see below). This lasted the entire day. The next day, we took a bus towards to Kaikoura, which is where a lot of the water related activities occur. The first day, we took a tour through a Maori leap cave with a very animated tour guide. He kept pointing out certain stalacmites/tites in the cave and telling us they looked like certain objects and people. For example, one of them looked like Queen Elizabeth II and another like Henry VIII. I think he spent too much time in the cave.
Next, we head out to the Seal colony, which was really neat. The seals were just lying around sleeping not really paying much attention to us. We got some good pictures from that. The highlight of the trip though was the following day: dolphin swimming! Before we suited up, the guides told us there was a rather large seasick warning because of the storm and asked if we were still up for it? I said yes, of course. So, Jenn and I suited up. Kim was just a spectator for this activity. We watched a video first where we were advised to not touch the dolphins. They also gave us tips on how to interact with them. For example, we were told to make dolphin-ish noises. Kim can vouch for how hilarious we looked doing this. We were also told to swim like a dolphin (lots of diving) and circle them (kind of like playing tag with them). So after the video, we set off on the bus. Then we got onto a boat and head out to sea. The average searching time to sight a pod of dolphins is 20-30min. We searched for 45 minutes and still nothing! So, we were told that we were going to head back but that we would be getting most of our money back. I was pretty disappointed though. But then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a pod of 300-400 dolphins appeared! It was magical. So, we got our hoods and masks on and jumped in. There were so many of them. I was nudged by a few and got to play tag with one as well. They are such beautiful creatures. I had my waterproof camera with me, so I got some really neat up close pictures. Kim took a few good ones of them jumping out of the water as you'll see below. So, what started out as a pretty disappointing day ended as an exhilarating experience. After the swim, we head back to town, where many shops were not opened yet because it happened to be Anzac Day in New Zealand (April 24). This is similar to Remembrance Day in Canada, but NZ shares it with Australia hence the ANZ.
Another interesting backpacker story. We stayed at a place called Sunrise Lodge Backpackers in Kaikoura. This place was suggested by my trusty Lonely Planet guide. The LP interpretation was that it was kind of a hippy-esque place with really friendly animal-loving personable owners. Sure enough, when we first arrived into town at the info centre, the lovely owners came to pick us up in their 20+ year old van. They were a really nice elderly couple who chatted us up. When we checked in, we asked for the keys and that's when they told us that they don't believe in keys and they leave doors unlocked and open most of the time. I thought this was interesting, but manageable. The girls and I figured out that we can lock/unlock the doors with a coin, so that's what we did while we stayed there. However, all the other guests were really friendly, so we really did have nothing to worry about. We has a pretty good experience there overall. However, the cherry on top to LP's description came when the owner ran into the living area where the other guests and I were sitting and shouted "Who wants to come save an injured animal with me right now?" One of the guests jumped to the challenge and they ran off into his "Rescue Animal" van and took off. It was really quite entertaining and of course admirable to see.
For the last portion of the trip, we head to Chrischurch. CC is the second largest city in NZ next to Auckland. We went to an Art gallery, craft fair and Maori show while there. The Maori experience as they called it was very cool. We saw some traditional dances and even atempted some ourselves as you will see below. After the show, we were served a buffet dinner with some traditionally cooked dishes. There is a certain way that Maori cook there meat and vegetables. It is within the ground and results in almost a steamed taste. Very good. After dinner, we took a tour in a wildlife reserve of the nocturnal animals. Probably the most famous one is the Kiwi bird. These are flightless, wingless birds with very sensitive eyes. So unfortunately we could not take any flash photos of them. They are very very cute though. The sad thing we learned was that only about 2% of them survive in the wild because of the many rodents (i.e. possums and ferrets) that were brought over to NZ. So there are many attempts to save them right now.
Finally, we made our way back to Dunedin eventually. The bus ride was supposed to be 5 hours, however it turned out to be longer because unbeknownst to us, there was a flood in Dunedin while we were gone (because of the rain) and thus, one of the bridges on the main highway near Dunedin collapsed. The driver told us it was going to be an extra 5 hour wait, so we had to get comfortable. Fortunately the maintenance workers got it up and running in less than an hour and we made it home by midnight. What a way to finish the trip. I realized just how limited NZ really is sometimes because there was no alternative route at all. There is only one highway/road/route between 2 of the largest cities in NZ. However, we managed and I have no complaints....for now :)
Hope you enjoyed this post!
Te Papa Museum
a Marae