Wellington

We left Abel Tasman and headed to the Interislander Ferry to Wellington. It was a pretty uneventful voyage. The highlight was the lunch from the bakery we had in Picton before departing.

I loved Wellington! I loved our accommodation in Wellington!

The view from our Wellington flat.

After staying in countless holiday parks we finally had our very own apartment. I found this place on Airbnb.com and will gladly recommend it to anyone venturing to Wellington.

Wellington, the capital of NZ, is built right into and among the rolling hills of the North Island. It was a feat of engineering to build these homes up dozens of steps at the tops of hills, but they did it! Those same windy roads I've been discussing in all of my posts run throughout the neighbourhoods of the city, but now they are lined with parked cars rather than cliffs. It seems to be a university town with lots of young people everywhere. There is art all over, sculptures everywhere you look. Kids are rowing in Maori canoes at the harbour rowing club after school everyday while tourist look on from the comfort of their beanbag chairs outside of the pub. It's all very cool.

We had very precise directions to get to our apartment, and found the place with just a little difficulty. None of the roads run parallel or at right angles, so the the three right turns you think will take you back to where you started, do not! The street was a very steep hill. We parked and began emptying the car, then found we had 40 stairs to climb to get to the front door. Four suitcases, cooler, and random bags later we made it up. The flat, which was the first floor of a house, was adorable. It looked like it could have come out of an Ikea catalogue. Tiny, but so cute. We had our own all-in-one washer/dryer, a dishwasher, private bathroom and bedroom. The view was spectacular -- overlooking the whole city. It was awesome!

Bill and I walked down to the grocery store and picked up the necessities, we made a curry dinner, and got settled in.

The next morning the boys and I went to the Adrenalin Forest, a high wire course set admist a redwood forest. There were seven challenges in total, but Brody was only big enough for the first two. We all did those first two (each of which had about 15 challenges), and had a lot of fun. Then, Jack and I continued on to level three. All was going well until the spinning logs.

Brody about to do a Flying Fox (Kiwi zipline)

There were three spinning logs about 8-10 feet long, each hanging about 15m high, independently (so you had the challenge of moving from one spinning log to the next one). Above the logs was a line at chest height onto which we attached our harnesses. I did the first 2 3/4 logs without a problem, then fell. Boy, did I fall. As I hung there, helpless and winded, Jack was screaming to me from the next tree over. He had his wrist trapped between the two straps of his harness as he also was dangling. He was screaming, "Mommy, I'm losing feeling in my hand!" as I was frantically trying to move the last foot onto the platform and then unharness myself. After an eternity, I got myself over to Jack and recovered him.

Did that stop us from proceeding? Hell no. We went on to Level 4. Why? Stupidity.

I was still wiped out from the third level, and then found myself scaling along a single tightrope wire 21m high. What was I thinking? There were 19 challenges at this level, and you must complete them all or call for a rescue (a humiliation worse than anything) because there are no ladders on which to descend.

Well, I persevered and completed level 4. Barely. Here's just one example of my injuries (there are more):

Beauty, eh? Many Naproxin and glasses of wine later (not (always) together), I'm much better. And wiser. Maybe. Still a sweet as bruise, but looking more like a sunset than an approaching storm.

Another day in Wellington we went to the National Te Papa Museum. I had heard this was the best museum NZ had to offer, and it was great. The exhibits were very kid-friendly, and we had a chance to learn more about the Maori history and culture. More on this in a later post. Suffice it to say, the museum was beautiful and bigger than we could complete in the few hours we had available.

The Contemporary Marae (Maori meeting house) at Te Papa

We had another challenge walking to and from the museum. Where we would have sidewalks at home, in Wellington there are staircases. Like the roads, they aren't parallel to anything, and like many streets, they aren't labelled. So, we descended on stairways not really knowing if we were going to end up at someone's doorstep or at the next street. I took some photos of our return home from the museum:

At the halfway point on one downtown sidewalk

To our flat

 

And still up to our flat

 

And a few more...

 

Jack made it!

We didn't really do much more of significance in Wellington. It was fun just shopping and travelling around like locals. We went to the mall, walked around downtown, and hung out at the waterfront -- like city-dwellers. All in all, it was a great change of pace from our previous pastoral/alpine pursuits.