From Picton to Wellington
Day 9: Friday 6th December
It was now time to see what the North Island had to offer. No longer having our car, we ordered a taxi to take us to the Interislander ferry port. It wasn’t all that far but we thought it was just a little too far to walk with all our luggage. We arrived in good time for the 10.00am sailing, checked in our main luggage and went upstairs to the lounge area. We could see there were not going to be many foot passengers on this crossing. We had booked the Plus lounge to make sure we had a good seat for this almost 4 hour crossing. We needn’t have worried, the whole ferry was extremely quiet. However it did mean we had the benefit of the free buffet, first breakfast items and pastries and later a lunch menu. We left Picton and sailed through the beautiful Marlborough Sound.
The weather was perfect for the crossing with still waters and sunshine so we were able to go out on deck as well as settle down in our comfy seats.
We got another taxi the other side to take us to our hotel. We were staying at The Bolton Hotel in Wellington advertised as a 5* boutique hotel. I had been looking forward to this being a nice hotel and I always enjoy a full hotel breakfast. Unfortunately it didn’t live up to it’s 5* standard. On arrival I felt as if they were pushing us to pay more for an upgrade. If we had wanted a different room we would have booked it, it wasn’t a free upgrade. The room we had was fine and nicely furnished. After settling in we set off to ride the cable car and explore the botanical gardens. It turned out to be in quite a good position for exploring the city on foot.
We spent quite a while wandering around the vast gardens and were disappointed to find the café already closed at 3.30 pm so no chance of a cup of tea. The gardens were really interesting with different areas for different types of plants. We could hear many birds but the one that stood out was the strange noises from the Tui that we had come to recognise now and found it to be a common bird in these parts.
We continued our walk through to an amazing rose garden that we had caught just at the right time as they were all in full bloom. I made a photographic record of some of the varieties so I could see if I could source some for my own garden when I got home. The walk then took us back down through an old cemetery and came out just alongside our hotel.
Later on we ventured into the city centre to find something to eat. We were not that hungry and just wanted something fairly light. We had a bit of trouble finding anywhere as a lot of the places nearby were restaurants attached to hotels which was not really what we were after. It was a Friday night so some of the bar’s revellers were spilling out on to a square with music playing. We possibly walked in the wrong direction and should have done a bit more research on where to go before we set off. It was certainly a sudden change from the quiet rural South Island.
Day 10: Saturday 7th December, Our second day in Wellington
After our very disappointing breakfast experience we set off to walk along the waterfront. I didn’t find this all that impressive and I think I was perhaps missing all the fantastic scenery of South Island. It is after all the capital city of New Zealand. We already had plans to see the Te Papa museum which had been well recommended to us. It didn’t disappoint. It was a great museum with a variety of interesting exhibits from Maori culture to some amazing modern art installations.
It had a fantastic and very moving Gallipoli exhibition which took at least half an hour to see. It had such realistic 3x life size models of the soldiers and was well worth seeing.
We ended up spending 4 1/2 hours in this brilliant museum which has completely free entry. We did in fact stop in one of their excellent cafés for some refreshment whilst going around the exhibits. We had another tour booked for the evening so we picked up some sandwiches on the way back to eat in our room as we knew there wouldn’t really be time to eat out that night. Back in our room at about 6.00 pm there was a terrific thunderstorm. As we had planned an evening outdoor tour this was a bit worrying. Luckily within an hour the rain had stopped and we were hopeful our tour would be able to go ahead. We were really looking forward to our night time tour of Zealandia eco sanctuary and had booked a few months earlier. This was to be the place where we were most likely to spot Kiwi and we couldn’t go home from New Zealand without seeing any could we? We arrived by taxi, ( the free shuttles don’t seem to run for the evening tours) and met the rest of our small group. We were given our red glowing night torches and headsets before being taken to watch a short film about the origins of the eco sanctuary and what we might expect to see or hear. The tour began at twilight so we saw the day birds settling for the night. As the darkness fell it became quite magical just hearing the sounds from the birds in the trees and bush. We were there for 2 1/2 hours walking for most of it just by our own torchlight. We started by hearing the Tui which we were now familiar with, then the morepork, we saw the Takahe, and Little shags by the water.
As it became dark we saw several of the nocturnal spiny reptiles, Tuatara.
We saw a really impressive display of glow worms beside the path. Several others in the group had been to other sites specifically to see glow worms and said there were far more here. Our guide pointed out quite a few different slugs and also the endemic nocturnal Tree Wetas. Another interesting and threatened species that are breeding there is the Maud Island Frog. These very long living frogs (can be 35 years +) lay eggs that hatch into froglets and do not have tadpoles like other frogs.
Then finally on our walk back to the centre we saw the Little Spotted Kiwi foraging for food. We were all able to watch it for several minutes under the red torchlight before it scootled off into the undergrowth. What a way to end our brilliant evening!