New Zealand - Wellington - Seafaring to the Capital

I was really dragging my feet on leaving South Island after realizing it would be a tough act to follow. I was dragging them even harder as I rolled out long before sunrise in Christchurch to catch my 7am bus to Picton. Although all I wanted to do was sleep out the ride, the absurdly beautiful sunrise over the plains of Canterbury province wasn't having it.



And then it was three hours of driving right along the shoreline on the coast, notably Kaikoura.



It's really not fair for one island this size to keep so much stunning scenery all to itself!

In Picton, I scurried off my bus right onto the Interisland ferry, which is a three hour crossing of the Cook Strait, noted as one of the prettiest ferry rides in the world.



The first hour is spent winding out of the Marlborough Sounds (wine country, where some of the trees were red) to the strait where you can see the coasts of both the North and South Islands at the same time. Then another hour coming around the point into Wellington Harbour. And I don't know what's with my weather luck, but the sun has followed me everywhere I've gone (notable exception of Dunedin). The crossing is apparently quite hard when the seas are rough, but we had a clear day and moderate conditions, so it was smooth sailing. Except in one respect...

For the ride, I opted to sit up on the top observation deck to enjoy the sights and to avoid the hordes of schoolchildren running around the lower decks entertaining themselves. The wind was quite loud, despite it being a rather calm day, which I didn't mind until the crew started making announcements over the speaker. Turns out the wind drowns them out. Here is what I heard: "Attention passengers... garble, garble... emergency... garble, garble... fire on deck seven... garble, garble, garble... abandon ship." And then the emergency siren sounded.

No surprises, I was somewhat alarmed. Now, during emergencies, passengers are directed to gathering points to await further instructions from the crew. I and my fellow top deck observers looked around to the designated meeting place; there were no staff in sight. Huh. Not encouraging. So more than a few of us proceeded downstairs to a passenger deck. Where we were bewildered to discover everyone just sitting around watching the tv and playing cards. At which point we learned that the announcement had in fact been: "Attention passengers, at this time the crew will be running an emergency drill. Please disregard the following instructions. Crew members, assume there is a fire on deck seven. The emergency siren will sound. Prepare to abandon ship."

They really should look into amplifying that top deck speaker.



Wellington had heaps of things to do, but I wasn't feeling ambitious after my whirlwind tour of Christchurch. I took the cable car up to the Botanic Gardens (which I liked better than the one in Christchurch) with a British girl I'd met at the hostel who enjoyed my pronunciation of the word 'duvet'. We agreed that the view of the harbour was quite pretty and there were some very impressive trees (a big admission from two people who aren't horticulturalists). However, since it's autumn, the flowers were all dying off, the ducks were gone from the pond and the observatory and treehouse were closed. Oh well. Spent the afternoon wandering around town down Cuba St (the "latin" quarter - mostly trendy shopping and cafes) and the waterfront.

Day Two was spent at The Museum, Te Papa. It was enormous - six floors of interactive exhibits. You could spend hours in there. I was suffering from information overload fairly quickly, so I tried to pick and choose areas of interest. Coolest part: preserved giant squid on display. I do not want to run into one of them in the wild. They could definitely eat me. There was also a high tech floor map of NZ where if you step on a square, pictures of the area would appear on the walls in the room. Before I knew it, I'd been in there for three and a half hours, so I had to book it to the grocery store to get some dinner organized before my 11 hour overnight bus ride to Auckland that night.

Could have done another day in Wellington I think - missed the free tour of their Parliament buildings, which was highly recommended, as well as the film archives which screen any NZ film for you for free as well. Ah well, time is short, what could I do? I probably should have left more time for North Island, but South Island was too hard to leave.