There and Back Again: Wellington

Devon and I left Taupo and headed south for Wellington. It was close to a five hour drive in which we passed a Military Museum and Mokai Gravity Cannon. In Mokai you can bungy, zipline, flying fox, or swing. Its also the river and canyon used to shoot the Gates of Argonath in the Fellowship of the Ring.(The river sequence with giant statue of the two kings) I added both of them to our list of to do's on our way back North in a few months.

We made it to Wellington where we stayed with Mike and Vivian Hill. We met their son Darren who is flat mates with Tysen and Mel in Auckland. He graciously extended the invite for us to stay with his parents if we ever go through Wellington. Our original host plan fell through so we took Darren up on his offer and very glad we did.

We spent a couple of short but awesome days staying with the Hill Family. They were very warm, welcoming, and friendly. Fun fact: They bought and converted the old Malaysian Embassy into their current home.

While in Wellington Devon and I did two things. We visited the Te Papa Tongarewa Museum. We spent a solid 3 hours meandering our way around the various attractions of the museum. We saw and learned a lot about the natural and human history of New Zealand.

The next day we made our way over to the Weta Cave! The Weta Workshop and Weta Digital is a NZ based company that was responsible for all of the costumes, armor, weapons, minitures, digital effects, etc for the Lord of the Rings films and the soon to come Hobbit movies. They dedicated a small section called the Weta Cave where people could come in and see the various pieces on display. It was pretty much a gift shop but a gift shop with stuff in it from awesome movies and hand made by the artists at Weta. I wished for a more in depth look into the stuff made for the LOTR and other movies but I will take what I can get. We still got to see a 30 min video of the History of the Weta Workshop and some really cool collectors items and memorabilia.

The next day, Wednesday, Devon and I drove onto the Interislander Ferry and took the 3 hour cruise to the South Island! It was a beautiful cruise once we reached the Marlborough Sounds of the South Island. From their we weaved our way inland to the port of Picton.

Picton is a small town but kept busy by the coming and going of the ferry 3 times a day. These are very big ferries by the way. Holding several hundred passengers and at least a hundred or so vehicles.

Once off the fairy we made our way into town for some lunch and to check our email. We stopped at a place of which I now forget the name of because it has been so long since we were there. I do remember I had a smoked salmon egg bagel sandwich. Delicious. Devon got Greek Chicken and Cous Cous, also delicious.

We headed to the library which has free Wifi and checked our email. Having no responses from any of the hosts we sent inquiries and then made our way towards the town of Nelson.