Advertisement
Published: July 16th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Cable Car
Wellington from the botanic gardens After the ferry crossing from hell we had made it to Wellington! Instantly different to the south island, we were greeting with skyscrapers and traffic when we got off the boat, and we had to drive the van on a motorway for the very first time! Very exciting. We planned to spend a day in Wellington, so next morning we were up bright and early to get a bus into the city to explore.
First up was the historic Wellington cable car, which rich was relieved to see was actually a tram and not a cabin suspended in the air. The car takes you up a hill to a lookout point over wellington city and harbour which was lovely, then you walk back down through the botanic gardens (these seem to be everywhere we go!) and finish up outside parliament. one of the parliament buildings is shaped like a beehive which is interesting! After looking round there we headed back into the city centre to treat ourselves to some lunch in one of the many cafes in the area. After a lovely meal we went to spend a couple of hours in Te Papa which is the national museum of
Most exciting thing in Napier
An anchor with the same birthday as Sal! New Zealand. The place is enormous and had lots of different displays about New Zealand, the origins, the climate and a whole bit about earth quakes and volcanoes. Apparently New Zealand has 14,000 earthquakes a year?! We haven't noticed any yet....
After a stressful couple of hours in the museum (it's school holidays here and it seems EVERYONE went to Te Papa when we did, haven't seen that many people in a while!) we headed off for a well deserved drink overlooking the harbour, we found a bar that had a brewery on site which was quite cool, you could see the brewing area beind the bar while you were sampling their products. We stayed for the remainder of the day.
Next morning we set off north, driving first up the Kapiti Coast, which we had read was a beautiful strech of coastline with unspoilt beaches....we were a little disappointed as the first beach we came across was filthy and had what looked like roadworks on it. Nevermind. Moving on we drove to Palmerston North where we stopped by a gorge for lunch, before continuing our drive along a very windy road along the edge of the gorge
Mount Doom
Otherwise known as Tongariro all the way to Napier. Napier is the only Art Deco city in New Zealand, as the town was destroyed by an earthquake in the 30's it was completely rebuilt in art deco style and remains that way today. There were lots of colourful and interesting buildings there, and more excitingly an anchor statue that was donated to Napier on my birthday! We camped in Napier overnight before driving to Lake Taupo.
Lake Taupo is stunning, we were lucky it was beautiful weather when we arrived, and from the lake edge in town you can see all the way over to Tongariro and the volcanoes there, which were covered in snow and looked amazing. As the weather was so nice, we decided to head straight out and do a walk. We walked to a place called Huka Falls which were amazing waterfalls about an hours walk north. The falls pass something stupid like a million gallons of water a second, they were very impressive. After our walk we decided to go and see some geothermal activity. The central plateau in New Zeland is all volcanic, and becuase of this they have loads of hot springs, thermal pools, bubbling mud
Huka Falls
Finally an impressive waterfall, in Taupo. etc. We went to a place called Craters of the Moon where you can follow a board walk around so you don't get your feet burned. The scenery was amazing! Loads of craters with steam coming out, and mud, and random vents spurting steam around you. We really enjoyed it.
Activities done for the day we headed back to Taupo town to camp for the night. The next morning we awoke to pouring rain, again! The weather is so unpredictable. We decided to head off to the local prawn farm as it seemed to be one of only a few wet weather activites. We didn't really know what to expect, but it turned out to be amazing! After a guided tour where we met Shawn the Prawn (he's massive!) and fed some baby prawns we were given a fishing rod and some bait, and then headed out to the prawn pools to fish for prawns. This turned out to be completely addicitve and ever so slightly competitive. Rich caught 3 prawns to my 1, but i say it's quality not quantity. When you've done fishing the restaurant on site cooks your prawns up for you to take away, that
Craters of the Moon
Rich looking arty in the steam was a proud moment.
That afternoon we had booked to go Quad Biking. With the rain still falling we layered on the waterproof and mud proof clothing before being show to our bikes and given a very brief lesson on how to use one. They are very scary! All the tracks we really muddy and really steep, after about 40 minutes i had had enough and swapped from driving myself to being a passenger on our guides quad bike, much more fun as he went really fast whereas i'd been crawling along at about 5mph. Rich however loved it! And has now decided he wants a quad bike. He flew round the course and didn't really seem to have any problems or any fear unlike me! Must be a boy thing. After 2.5 hrs on the tracks we were caked in mud, soaking wet and freezing cold. It was fun though.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.05s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0316s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb