Wellington & Cook Strait - 4 to 6 November 2010

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We seem to have had a problem with our Tongariro Blog so hope you have received it although some of you seem to have received it three times – hope you are not too bored!! We had a long drive today heading down to Wellington for our interisland ferry crossing to South Island. Our visit to the North has ended already and we have thoroughly enjoyed our stay having met some lovely people on the way around. Everyone says that South island is better but we must say that the North has been good and will take some beating. We have allowed two days to explore the area around Wellington before our crossing on Saturday morning at 0830 hours. We took a scenic route down from the mountains travelling through many small towns and stopping at one called Bulls (the largest township in the area) for coffee and cake and hopefully some shopping. Asking whether there was a supermarket in town where we could stock up on supplies we were looked at with utter amazement and directed to a small mini mart! Needless to say we did not get much but a few essentials. …..Once we left the mountains behind us the countryside to the south became quite barren and windswept. We continued on through Ohakea, home to a large Royal New Zealand Air Force Base as well as an Airforce Museum. We soon knew we were arriving at Wellington as the traffic which had been extremely scarce gradually started to build up and before long we were actually on a dual-carriageway - the first one since Auckland! Our campsite for the next couple of days was at Hutt Park a suburb of Wellington and probably the less picturesque site we had stayed at but at least it was a convenient location for the ferry or so we thought…….. In the morning we decided we would get a bus into Wellington and explore the city which has been compared with San Francisco, complete with cable car. We intended to get the cable car up to the botanical gardens and then walk down to the harbour. Wellington has just recently been named as the best small capital of the world and indeed it is quite small! We caught the local bus which seemed to go around all the suburbs and the bus driver stopped the bus near the cable car entrance, however today it was closed for servicing (just our luck) so we had to walk and took a route up via the Memorial Gardens and we were pleased we did as these proved to be quite interesting. They gave a glimpse of the past and into the life and times of a growing colony, the cemetery is as old as the settlement of Wellington itself founded in 1840 (not that old really). Stories told by reading the headstones reflect the growing pains of the colony, poor sanitation, disease, lack of welfare etc together with the growing prosperity in this thriving port town. Huge controversy arose in the 1960s when the cemetery area was selected for the route of the city’s motorway. The cemetery was closed for 3 years whilst about 3700 burials were exhumed and reinterred in a vault. Where there were headstones these were located as near as possible to the original site but a lot of the earlier burials only had wooden headstones which were no longer visible and they found a lot more burials than they had anticipated and ended up moving a lotmore that they had assumed. It is quite sad as the original cemetery is now split into two parts and you have to cross a motorway footbridge to get to the other side – quite surreal (but I suppose that’s progress for you). We picked up a leaflet at the entrance to the memorial garden and this was quite useful, pointing out various graves of interest and giving brief information on the history of the earlier settlers of New Zealand. In the gardens there is also the original sexton’s cottage, built in 1857 which is one of the oldest houses in Wellington and also a replica of the original mortuary chapel, now an information centre which contains historical displays and a register of all the burials that were moved to make way for the motorway. We finally arrived at the top of the hill and into the botanic gardens where we walked through the Lady Norwood Rose Garden which was just coming into bloom. Lovely smells wafted from some of the old roses and in a few weeks this area will look stunning (hard to believe it’s late Autumn in the UK). The garden opened in 1953 with 106 different beds each containing a different cultivar and outside the beds there is a collection of patio roses and David Austin roses (we have a couple of these at our house in South Wonston). There were also a couple of large greenhouses with beautiful orchids and a lovely lily pond complete with giant lilies. The garden was on various levels and as you walked through them you kept climbing and ended up at the cable car terminus where a couple of mechanics were indeed servicing the car - (glad we walked as most of the floor boards looked a little rotten)!. From here there were terrific views out over the harbour of Wellington a truly lovely view. We made our way back down and wandered around the city and noticed in a travel agent a 11 day tour of Britain for only NZ$2609 (cheap at half the price perhaps we should do this for our next trip!) In the harbour area they were preparing for Bonfire Night with a huge display of fireworks (NZ$20K going up in smoke). We thought we may consider walking down to the nearest river bridge to see them later on in the evening. However when we arrived back at the campsite the weather which had been lovely and sunny all day suddenly changed, the wind picked up and rain started to come down in torrents so we decided to have an early night before our ferry journey to the south island in the morning. What a mistake - no early night for us – as the wind picked up to gale force our motorhome which was parked directly under a large tree swayed to and thro all through the night and the noise levels were unbelievable – we had probably an hours sleep all night!!! As we were awake we set off early to catch the ferry and had a very unpleasant drive down to the dockside, where ‘Mo’ our trusting ‘satnav’ decided to take us the wrong way up a one way street and we had to make a very hasty u-turn at some traffic lights (lucky it was very early Saturday morning and all the local residents were still in bed). We finally made it to the ferry terminal where there was an extremely long queue (we think because of the gales that the early morning ferry did not go so our crossing was going to be very crowded)……….. We queued for an hour and half as huge lorries were directed onto the ferry, whilst all the motorhomes in the queue were kept waiting (a horse wagon arrived and this was told to wait for the next ferry due to rough seas, does not bode well). We were finally directed onto the Interislander ferry which was named Kaitaki a Maori word meaning Challenger (which it proved to be). The Kaitake, with the capacity to carry over 1500 passengers, is the largest most majestic vessel sailing in New Zealand waters today (a faint sign under the name said formerly The Pride of Cherbourg………). On entering the ferry we were directed up a steep ramp and onto the ‘open foredeck’ where the crew were fixing chains around a very large lorry (oh dear they are obviously preparing for a rough crossing)! We were directed to the side of this lorry (partially undercover so hopefully the motohome makes it to south island), however they did not supply us with chains so all must be OK! Once on board finding any space seemed to be a premium and at this point Paul decided that an upgrade to the executive Kaitake Plus lounge would probably be to our advantage, as it did indeed prove to be. It was like entering another world, breakfast was being prepared by a staff member who immediately showed us the breakfast buffet and told us to help ourselves - as we had not eaten we immediately tucked in to a full English, the sort of thing you do when sailing across a tempestuous channel! The Cook Strait is a natural funnel for the strong north-easterly wind currently known as the Roaring Forties. On a bad day (like today) it can be one of the most unpleasant short stretches of water on earth and indeed it proved to be a very bad crossing especially around the point where the two seas meet (Tasman and Pacific). Most people were being very poorly and we were so glad we were in a comfortable lounge and manage to ‘weather the storm’ without visiting the ‘white bags’ which the crew were carrying around by the handful……. The rough seas billowed against the ferry for quite a while but as the boat squeezed through the narrows to enter the Tory Channel in the Marlborough Sounds it was indeed like entering another world. It’s sheltered coves and bays beckoning with blissful hues of greens and blues and the winds abated and the sun came out (apparently this complex configuration of sunken valleys has more that 620 miles of shoreline and it was a truly lovely setting as we got our first glimpse of the Sounds and South Island.

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Comments

[Sean Mason]

Hello
Hi Both Looks like you are having a fantastic time! apart from the Boat Trip, no sleep etc etc.... South Islands sound amazing. Myself, Rachel and Jack are all fine looking forward to Jack Birthday on 1st December (we are getting him a wooden train set...dont tell him though!!) cant believe he is 2 allready, love reading the blogs keep them coming. Love Sean, Rachel and Baby Jackxx

[silvernomads]

Hi - Thanks for your response and glad to hear all is well with you three. Give Jack a special hug from us, he will be so 'grown up' when we return. Off to view some yellow-eyed penguins on Otago Pensinsula later. Love to you all. P&SX