Week 8: Wellington & Nelson/Tasman

Greetings!

So, Wellington delivered on the craft beer, but not on the coffee.  At this point, we're resigned to the fact that the rest of the world doesn't do drip coffee, let alone good drip coffee.  And Wellington delivered on everything else, so we're letting the coffee disappointment slide.

We spent three nights in Wellington, but we could have spent many more.  We may try to squeeze another in on our way back north to Auckland for our flight home in four weeks.  Wellington is a city about the size of Milwaukee, but not nearly as sprawling.  As a result, it has a bustling downtown area that's set on a hillside overlooking a large bay.  It has the feel of a small San Francisco; there seem to be separate neighborhoods, each with their own character.  

The waterfront is a busy mix of tourists and Wellingtonians out for a walk during the workday.  We chatted with three guys who were jumping off the pier after playing a mid-workday netball game in the indoor sports center along the water.  All along the waterfront there are places set up to facilitate jumping out into the bay, including a ship plank and a 5-meter staircase leading up to a platform.  You'd never see anything like this in the U.S., of course, and I got my chance to dive in later that day.

We spent most of our first full day at the Weta Workshop, which is a design studio that works on movies and museum installations, among other things.  Weta Workshop has been in business for decades, but it was made famous by its work on the Lord of the Rings movies.  Since then, it's worked on blockbuster after blockbuster.  We took two different studio tours, filled with LOTR and Hobbit stuff that the boys (and Aimee and I) loved.  We managed to escape the gift shop without any purchases, a feat that may or may not have involved a parent lying to his child about a Legolas figure being shipped back to Milwaukee.

No pictures inside the workshop,
so this is all you get

Our first LOTR filming location.
"Get off the road!"

The next day, we spent a couple hours wandering around Te Papa, the National Museum of New Zealand.  Weta Workshop produced larger-than-life size models of World War I soldiers and nurses for an exhibit covering NZ's involvement in the months-long Battle of Gallipoli (which we learned was a huge disaster for the Allies).  These models were incredible.  They were huge, but they were amazingly realistic.  The artistry involved is something I just can't comprehend.

We also caught a few performances at "Te Matatini Ki Te Ao," the National Kapa Haka Festival that's held every other year.  There are dozens of groups that compete over four days to perform a series of tribal dances (including one that is similar to what fans of the New Zealand All Blacks will recognize as the team's performance before their rugby matches).  It was a bit rainy at the festival, but the dances were amazing and another reminder of how important the Maori culture is to modern New Zealand.

We spent the remainder of our time walking around the city, eating, and stopping into every brewery we saw.  Our time in Wellington felt a lot like a real vacation and we treated ourselves to a bit of eating out (and breweries).  When you're on a three-month long trip, though, you can't live like you're on vacation for very long or you'll run out of money and get very fat.

So many good restaurants and breweries

We've snapped back to long-term travel eating and drinking habits now that we've crossed over to the South Island.  Well, wait, we did spend our first afternoon on the South Island biking around Marlborough, which is one of New Zealand's main wine-growing areas, tasting wine.  So we snapped back to long-term travel eating and drinking habits right after that.

We killed a rainy day doing some school work, work work, and travel planning before heading up to Golden Bay (map below), an area near the tippy top of the South Island.  

We camped right on the bay-side beach and hiked out to another beach Tasman Sea side called Wharariki Beach.  We've seen some beautiful beaches on this trip, but Wharariki may take the prize.  The beach itself is vast and the sand is perfect.  

There are giant rock formations along the coastline, one of which provided shelter to a family of seals to play in small tidal pools.  We sat there, not 20 meters from the seal mama and her pups, watching them play for at least an hour.

When the seals moved along to another spot, Cam and Wes took their place in the tidal pool.  Apparently, seal and human parents agree that tidal pools are nice, safe places for their children to swim and play.  Cam and Wes didn't even try to venture out into the waves, possibly because I had pointed out that where there are seals, there are things that eat seals and mistake small boys for seals.  Yes, I'm intentionally passing along my irrational fear of sharks onto my boys.

When we returned to our campground, we were greeted by two busloads of 12 year old boys on a field trip from Nelson, a small city about two hours away from Golden Bay.  We were right to be immediately concerned about the situation (they ran around like maniacs and were up, and loud, very early the next morning), but it also turned out that Cam made friends with all of them almost immediately and played on the beach with their group well into the dark.  

I think Cam really enjoyed some time playing with kids his age, instead of his younger brother and old parents.  It's remarkable how easily he makes friends with complete strangers - that's not anything like how Aimee and I were when we were younger (though we're a bit better at it now).  These NZ boys were very nice, as well.  He begged to stay at the campsite for another day or two, but we had to push on south.

We had planned to camp again tonight near Westport, a town on the West Coast of the South Island, but rain rolled in this afternoon and neither Aimee nor I fancied the idea of setting up camp in the rain on soggy ground, so we found a nice lodge to crash in for our two nights in this area.  I do think Aimee is coming around on camping a bit, though.  The sleeping on the ground part still isn't her favorite (yes, we have inflatable pads) but she has enjoyed cooking dinner together, some amazing stars at night, and waking up two mornings in a row to beautiful sunrises while the boys sleep in.

We'll do some exploring around here and then head to a campsite in the mountains (likely in Arthur's Pass National Park) for two nights, followed by two nights near the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers.

We likely will check in with another blog post when we arrive at our next AirBnB down in Wanaka/Queenstown on March 5.  Until then, we look forward to reading your comments and hearing from everyone at home.  

We hope all is well.  We miss you all.

Love,

Max, Aimee, Cam & Wes