Roadtrip to Wellington

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November 16th 2009

Published: November 16th 2009

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Rusty Broon

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Franz Josef Glacier

Well we hit the road early on Thursday for our two day road trip from Queenstown to Picton via the west coast. We had already planned our half way point to be Hokitika and covered 550 km to get there. First of all we stopped into Wanaka to collect our wedding photos only to find that they had already been sent on to the wedding planner in Nelson.

We carried on and stopped at Makarora for our packed lunch and then on to Franz Josef Glacier where we did 3 of the walks to get views of the Glacier. One of them was walking the Glacier valley to get as close to it as possible, which wasn’t a tough walk but did get colder and harder to breathe the closer we got. My trusty grey fleece has come in very handy and is my best NZ purchase! The Glacier was pretty impressive and with Fox Glacier is two of the largest.

We had booked a beach side log cabin in Hokitika, which had a small animal farm so of course I was loving it. It had Alpacas, pigs, goats, ducks and horses so we had a tour around those

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before heading into the town to get some fish and chips - yum! It was really windy so although we took a wander down to the beach, we didn’t stay long!

We didn’t set off as early the next day as we only had 350 km to Blenheim and only made one stop at Murchison for lunch. We got there about 3:30pm so took a walk around the town centre and bought another case to carry our wedding clothes. We also got some stuff at the supermarket for dinner as the place we were staying had cooking facilities. The whole journey was pretty flawless and the roads were pretty clear so we could do the speed limit without getting caught behind too many camper vans. I was pretty chuffed that I did half the journey as well since Russ does most of the driving. The only bad thing we noticed along the way is the amount of road kill, there is loads of it and most of them look like possum type animals, some of which are massive so felt quite sad about that.

We had booked the 10am boat from Picton to Wellington so were up early

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to make the 30 min drive and drop off the car before getting the boat. We were on sharp so managed to get excellent seats by the window to take in the view of the Malborough Sounds when leaving the south island. We ended up sharing our table with an elderly couple from Oz so spent most of the 3 hour journey chatting to them although half way through I ended up being sea sick and spending the rest of the journey either in the toilet or with my head in my hands. Felt much better for getting my feet on dry land and it didn’t take long to find our hotel.

We didn’t have a lot of time in Wellington so we mostly took a walk around the centre. We arrived the same day that the All Whites were playing Bahrain at the stadium just up the road so the city was jumping. That night we went to the Embassy theatre (where the world premiere of the Lord of the Rings was screened) to see 2012. It was such a cool place and was old style (more like a stage theatre) and the seats had the people’s names

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who had sat there during the premiere. We only managed to see Billy Boyd’s and Dominic Monaghan seats but that was enough to keep Russ happy. When we left we were just in time to see the All Whites bus passing and the crowds cheering to the bus in recognition of their 1/nil win. We also managed to get to the Te Papa museum of NZ.
Next stop is Rotorua.

Hope all is well back home.
Lots of Love
Anne & Russ xxx

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